Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Just being a tourist in Palestine for a week, I can understand the toll it must take on any
“love thy neighbor” person to live in a land where they say, “To exist is to resist.”
The conditions in Balata are dismaying, particularly when you think that people have
been living this way here for decades. But Israelis point out that Israel has taken in many
Jewish refugees and assimilated them into their prosperous society. Meanwhile, they claim
that Palestine—and the Arab world—has intentionally kept the West Bank refugee camps
in squalor in order to stir public opinion against Israel.
Observing the Holy Land from a distance through a media lens, we can't really get
an honest picture of the reality here. I might see a news clip of Palestinians destroying
a synagogue. It looks so hateful. And then I learn that during a land swap, Israel agreed
to give back land upon which they had built a luxurious modern settlement. And, before
retreating, they destroyed every building in the settlement except the synagogue. When
hardscrabble Palestinians, so poor and needy, walked into their land, they saw only rubble
except for one building—and they got mad and destroyed it. It's ugly both ways. But the
television coverage leaves the viewer with no context a wrong impression.
