knowledge shock

So, classes have started, which means I am back to discussing Gaza Sunrise, the feature I wrote last semester, with a large number of people who may know and believe very many different things about Palestine. And it's weird. It was weird last semester, but after having actually been to Palestine, it's now extra weird.

I've been so immersed in this world for so long that I sometimes forget that many Americans (usually through no fault of their own) do not know a single accurate thing about Palestine. They may not even know that Israel was founded by expelling three-quarters of a million people to create a European-Jewish majority state in an Arab-Muslim majority land. I think this is a pretty important piece of information for understanding the current situation. In fact, one might say it is actually the WHOLE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM. And yet it's history that many--perhaps even most--Americans don't know, and that Israel is consciously trying to suppress.

Add to this a whole slew of other misinformation or lack of information about history and current events, consciously or unconsciously held prejudices against Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians, confusion about who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed or just lack of admission that there is an oppressor and oppressed in the situation, incorrect or zero information about the various political actors and forces involved, and...well, you can see where I'm headed with this.

It leads to conversational difficulties. I'll admit I haven't quite got a good strategy worked out for dealing with this problem yet. It's rather like trying to have a conversation about how to best sautee a fish when your conversation partner thinks the fish is an orange.

The result is that I'm experiencing a repeat of the same feeling I had immediately after leaving Gaza. It wasn't culture shock, exactly (although seeing a European tourist with her ass literally hanging out of her short-shorts at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo was culture shock.) I'll call it knowledge shock.

I am trying to do as much patient explaining as humanly possible, since I do not think it's most people's fault that they are uninformed or misinformed, and after all that is a large part of why I went to Gaza--to be able to patiently explain and show and convince with greater authority because I can say "I have seen it." But it's not as easy as you might think.

The problem is that the patient explaining gets all complicated by the fact that I've developed a staggering, really almost frighteningly powerful, degree of emotional identification with the Palestinians and such an intrinsic, reflexive, visceral hatred of Zionism and the Israeli state that it's very hard not to get angry and want to scream "DON'T YOU SEE? DON'T YOU SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING?!" in the process of the patient explaining. Because whenever I start talking, all the atrocities and cruelties and injustices start rushing to the surface, and there are so, so many of them, and I feel them all so intensely, that it gets overwhelming and I become inarticulate.

I realize this is something I'll have to get over, because I don't think I'll stop talking about Palestine any time soon. I must figure out ways to bridge the knowledge chasm, because my knowledge is useless if it stays in my head.

I also realize that all this is bound up with the other reason I went to Gaza, the reason I couldn't quite articulate, which was to be somewhere where I did not feel like this. I struggled for months after returning from Gaza to explain this to people who didn't instinctively get it, to explain why being in Gaza brought with it such an enormous sense of relief, why Gaza felt more like home than possibly any place I've ever been in my life. Then I read Alice Walker's piece for Electronic Intifada, which was titled, perfectly, "The best place one could be on Earth." It opens with these words:

Coming "home" to Gaza

Rolling into Gaza I had a feeling of homecoming. There is a flavor to the ghetto. To the Bantustan. To the "rez." To the "colored section." In some ways it is surprisingly comforting. Because consciousness is comforting. Everyone you see has an awareness of struggle, of resistance, just as you do. The man driving the donkey cart. The woman selling vegetables. The young person arranging rugs on the sidewalk or flowers in a vase....

As I read her article, I started crying, not just because it was beautifully written and moving, but because she was saying everything I had been trying to say and been unable to. Well, I guess that's why she has a Pulitzer Prize and I do not.

I also realize one other thing, which is that this feeling of extreme dissociation, of knowledge shock, must be exactly what Palestinians living in diaspora feel every day of their lives. Which makes me entirely understand why people might want to stick to their own communities, or not be engaged in politics, or go back and live in their homelands, because in certain ways it's just easier. I think I would explode with frustration if I had to live every day like this.