Angry People...

I sought out and managed to find a very American hang out today, reinforcing my own worldly dilemma of continually trying to find my comfort zone. Sometimes, it can be as simple as eating a Quarter Pounder from McDonalds. Sometimes, it can be diving into a book or writing emails to friends and family. And sometimes, it is seeking out a place where Americans are. A local expat hangout if you will.
Books@Cafe is literally a small slice of America in the middle of Jordan. American books, an American-style pub, an American-style café and restaurant outside. The waitresses don’t even speak fluent Arabic. Take Anna, for example, our American waitress from Minnesota who woke up one day, assessed her life, and decided to move to Jordan, study Arabic, and work at an American-style café. How exactly does that happen? Where is the breaking point where the most obvious answer is to move to Jordan?
On another note, I took a cab in an all day search to figure out how to get a longer visa, and had a very interesting encounter with a Palestinian cab driver. Naturally assuming I was English (after at first thinking I was French…), this man who spoke broken English felt free to lecture me on the horrors of America and Israel.
“You know, I really hate Israelis and Americans,” he said. “It’s our land, and they take it for their own. We come to a truce, and the first thing the Israelis do it break it by killing people.”
Interestingly, he failed to mention the fact the Palestinians actually broke the cease fire by firing rockets into Israeli communities. He continued. I, perhaps wisely, smiled and kept my mouth shut.
“Any Arab who agrees to peace, I will never forgive. For my entire life, he will not be forgiven. No peace. They kill, kill, kill. If only the Arabs would finally stand together, Israel would be gone in a week. But they won’t come together. Some people like aid from Iran, some from America. Different interests.”
As he went on for the entirety of the cab ride, I came close to mentioning the fact the Arab nations had come together against Israel in the 1967 War, a war that Israel won in less than a week. I came close to mentioning that if the Arab nations came together and attacked Israel, those countries would be irreparably damaged. I came close to asking how he felt about his beloved Arab cities being incinerated underneath a nuclear mushroom cloud should the Arab world decide to attack Israel. I came close, but I kept my mouth shut.
I am not a fervent supporter of Israel. I believe the country has some of the most heinous foreign policies in existence and continue to build illegal settlements in the face of possible peace negotiations. I am also not a fervent supporter of Palestine. I believe if the Palestinian people would accept reality, recognize the legitimacy of Israel and reap the benefits of one of the biggest economies in the world, they would grow strong enough to actually create a legitimate state that could rival Israel’s. Instead, they fire rockets into Israel, directly creating brutal conditions for their own people that are considered practically unlivable by the United Nations.
Obviously, there is more to the picture, from religious entitlements to blind hatred, but the point I want to make is that I personally can never accept a person who does not accept the possibility of peaceful negotiations. I will attempt to empathize with them, but in the end, someone who has war on the mind, whether it’s religiously motivated (especially if its religiously motivated) or for another reason, is not interested in the advancement of the world, does not want a better life for the majority of the people, and in my opinion, cannot possibly have interpreted the word of God properly (if motivated by religion).
This is unfortunately the world we now live in. How do you possibly come to terms with blind hatred?