Aren't you afraid?

I have heard this question perhaps several dozen times since I have landed in Ramallah. The query comes from Israelis when they learn I live here. I have never been a 'hero' as I have mentioned many times when asked about making my film here during the second intifada. But the questions persists despite the recent bombing of Gaza or the crazy control of cities and borders in Palestine by the Israeli army.

Image 1: The Real

Am I afraid? Of what, I wonder? What are they asking me? Israel has this place locked down and on its knees. They control land, sea, air, water and Palestinian lives. I know that the question is about the Palestinian who wants to ‘erase me’, ‘kill me’, ‘throw me into the sea’, well, you get the picture. But no, I am not afraid—there is myth and reality and I am here in a place in which real people live real lives: Our Arabic teacher, she is 19, has concerns about finishing university, her brother's impending marriage, and the fact that her teachers say she talks too much...I don't know, 19 year old concerns; And then there is our landlady, Huda (70), who is worried about whether we ate enough that day (after she fed us four times) or how her daughters in the US are faring, or her excitement about me teaching her how to use the internet; Am I afraid? Of what?

It reminds me of James Baldwin's essay: Stranger in the Village in which he describes his experience as a Black man in a Swiss village. He illustrates this remote village's ignorance of the "Black Man," something they had never encountered. He compares it to America's relationship at the time to Blacks and the racism therein—despite the two peoples living in the same place, Whites had not really ‘encountered’ Blacks in any way other than the stranger among them. I cannot help but feel this way when Israelis ask me, in what I now imagine to be a southern-belle accent: "but now aren't you afraid of them folk"?

Racism as the outcome of colonial enterprise has been written about time again—more than I could ever do it justice here. But I can only surmise from my experience, and the nagging question about fear, that it is at play here in the most frightening of dimensions.

The Israeli building of the wall has achieved its purpose: Not to protect or defend Israel from 'terrorists', but to separate and entrench ignorance, fear and hatred.

Image 2: Fear

Just the other day I received an email from a friend who had decided to boycott the gay and lesbian film festival in Tel Aviv. He copied me on the response from the organizer, a gay man who we would assume is a learned, educated 'other' in Israeli society—one who might have insight into the complexity of the situation resulting from his own experience of intolerance and hatred. But alas, racism and its incumbent fear played its hand here too. Here was his response to my friend’s attempt to explain why he couldn’t screen at the festival in Israel at this moment:

I'm sorry for you and thanks to other important film-makers

that want to meet us, seat (sic) with us and talk with us.

Hope that one day you could (sic) screen your movies in Ramallah but

today we learn that Hamas are (sic) going to get prime-minister (sic) in

all Palestine. The Fatah prime minister resign (sic). so very soon

they will control not only Gaza but all Palestine and Iran's lows (sic)

are going to be in Ramallah too. So your dream is very far.

His lack of any understanding of the political reality here, and his panic therefore of “Palestine as Iran” resulting from a Hamas-led government—which is not the case anyhow, (and which of course in his mind equals the eradication of all homosexuals), invokes the question I am asked over and over again: “Aren't you afraid?” These ‘masked bogeymen’ haunt his imagination and become his real world vision of the neighbour behind the wall—the uncivilized savage.

Image 3: Fear, Still

A few weeks ago Tamira and I joined a hiking group here in Palestine. We go out on Fridays and 'discover' places we would not see otherwise. We have not found our fellow hikers to be scary although sometimes the paths we hike can be a little precarious. While in Tel Aviv we found ourselves staring through a plate glass window at hiking boots. While not intending to buy anything, we thought we could try some on just for the heck of it. Trying on a series of boots necessitates a series of questions: "Where will you be hiking?" "What kind of terrain?" "How long will you be walking for?" "Have you hiked here in Israel before? Where are you staying?" Tired of evading such queries I was pretty blunt: "I'll be hiking in the West Bank, in Palestine. We're living in Ramallah. We've joined a hiking group there." My fitter looked up from my boot-ensconced feet and was a bit confused: "Why are you there? What do you do?" I explain and he explains. My tree hugging gentle giant simply ‘wishes that things weren't the way they are but they must be like this because of the terror’. He tells me he is a peacenik but that after seeing THAT video (from 2000 during the second Intifada) of Palestinians beating and killing two Israelis (soldiers) and tossing them out of a window, he simply cannot imagine any other way. I reminded him that while indeed this was a terrible incident, it cannot be used as one to define a whole nation; I explain that it was played over and over again on Israeli (and world) television exactly to get this message of fear and terror embedded in the Israeli conscience; and that it happened just after 100 Palestinians had just been killed, 24 of whom were children! I cannot justify it, nor would I, but context is everything. His eyes were glazed-over, it made no difference, my arguments fell on deaf ears—He had been traumatized. "Aren't you afraid?" he asked. No, I said, but there was no point—the bogeymen were etched in his mind.

Image 4: Back to Reality

Do I think this is a great place for queer existence currently? No, not at all. Do I think it is an open, liberal, democratic society in which all can exercise freedom? No, not that either. There is much progress to be made. But nor do I think that 'tolerance' or 'justice' exist most places, and certainly not in Israel where military law supersedes civil law on a regular basis and the state defies international law time and again with impunity.

So what do I deduce from "Aren't you afraid?" That racism is alive and well in Israel; that the 'other' is indeed the scary monster under the bed (or behind the wall); that the cycle of violence will perpetuate as a result of this ignorance.

No, I am not afraid of what I am told I should be, but I am afraid of the spiraling ignorance, hatred and fear. I am afraid when 26% of the country votes for a fascist party and leader in hopes that he may ‘clean-things up'. I am afraid when the Palestinian becomes seen as the feared 'sub-human savage’ behind the wall. There is much to be afraid of in that.