Evil Flags = Evil Neighbors

Although the Leading Up North trip was a wonderful learning experience, there were several things which deeply saddened me. The first was a comment that was made by a teacher at the school during an English class. I was working with a student independently, when the classroom teacher approached me and started using the students’ jacket to discuss the names of various colors in Hebrew and English. The lesson started out as nothing particularly special, but took a surprising turn when the teacher began to discuss the representation of colors in relation to the Israeli and Arabic nation flags. After the student had repeated the colors in English, she stated that the white stood for peace, love and tranquility and the blue for such concepts as hope, progress and the sky. She then asked the student what the colors of the Arabic nations flags were, red, black and green, which she quickly associated with images of blood and death.

Although I was sitting right next to her and she was speaking in English, I could not believe what she was saying. How could a schoolteacher make such a comparison! Not only was this blatantly wrong, she was conveying this information to an impressionable child who is growing up in a region divided by politics and religion. As a future education that desires peace, how could a teacher commit such a careless act?

The answer to this question became apparent when she smiled and walked away. To her, these were not colors, but life. I guess when you live so close to conflict it is enviable that you will see many issues in black and white. I don’t think the members of this community hated the Lebanese or their Arab neighbors, but often view them as a nuance that terrorized their families and way of life.

Even after the severity of this comment hit me full force I didn’t say anything. What could I have done? It was not my place and I was not in the right setting. I decided to share this experience with my trip mates after we got back from the school. A few of them were disturbed, but the majority was silent and a few attempted to rationalize the teacher’s comments. This conversation continued late into the night when a group of teachers and parents were invited to our hostel to deliver a presentation they had put together about their settlement and the effects of the war.

The pictures and stories were touching and having spent less then 2 days at the school I was already in tears. As the presentation drew to a close I started to get nervous with anticipation. I decided that it would not be appropriate to address the flag comments as a group, as it was not my desire to cause pain or difficulty for the teacher. She was a lovely woman and granted me an open invitation to her house if I came back to Israel. Instead, I decided to ask a different question, one that would hopefully highlight the essence of the Arab-Israeli conflict. I asked the audience “have your children had any interaction with Lebanese children and if not would you like them to?”

As I expected, this question created a commotion amongst the audience. There was a heated attempt to translate. The school guidance counselor, a Canadian born lady who now lived in Kiryat Shimona with her husband and young daughter who attended the school responded to my question with several questions herself. “Why is this necessary?” “What do you hope to accomplish with this scenario and what type of setting exists for such an interaction between people, when we live in a perpetual state of uncertainty?” I tried to explain my reasoning for such an exchange when the guidance counselor began speaking once again, “If you think we teach our children to hate, we don’t!” Chatter amongst the other teachers encircled me before it was translated into English. “We don’t hate the Lebanese. During the war we offered shelter to many of them. We had numerous innocent Christian Lebanese families living here.”

Just to highlight, the key word in their comment was Christian. Although innocent Muslims were bombed, just like their own children in Israel, the notion of letting innocent Muslim Lebanese into Israel couldn’t register in their minds. That is exactly why we need programs that emphasize interaction between Jewish and Muslim populations. How can you advocate for peace, when there is such a clear distinction between the two.