Where The Past Meets The Future: My Experience In The Israeli-Lebanese Conflict (2006)

This article was also published in Odyssey Online, so please don’t hesitate to click the link to watch it there and to share it on social media: Where The Past Meets The Future: My Experience In The Israeli-Lebanese Conflict (2006)

I know it happened ten years ago, but as one of the conflicts that emerged in the uprising violence throughout the Middle East and in the world, I would like to share my experience so that we will never forget those lives lost and changed throughout it.

War is an event that not that many people will experience in their life. Is an event that most of us could relate to the past or to a region far, far away from our home. But what if one day you’ll face the reality were war is at your front door?

It wasn’t my first experience with a political conflict. I had experienced the Second Intifada while being in kindergarten. A conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that resulted in the construction of the Separation Wall; however, the fear that caused me cannot be even compared to the 2006 war, were basically missiles would fall in meters from my home.

I remember it was a hot summer in 2006. I just moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, and my sister was just born. We decided that it would be a good idea to visit our family in Northern Israel for three weeks. I bet it wasn’t a good idea after all.

As a kid, I was really excited about this visit. My grandfather would usually take me and my cousins for some outdoors camping. We would go to swim in the springs of the area, then we would make a fire, to then sit and relax, while eating a delicious baguette. I wish I could return to those happy days of my childhood… We always had a blast!

When we arrived to Israel, there was nothing to fear about any oncoming war whatsoever. To be honest, I don’t remember much about the escalation of the conflict details, except the one event that burst the conflict. I actually remember it to near perfection. After dinner, the whole family usually reunites in the living room to eat some dessert and drink some wine while watching T.V. At that time, the news channel was on. They said that an Israeli tank was ambushed, taking the soldiers in there with them. At first, I didn’t understand the situation. I was really confused. My nine-year-old mind couldn’t process it. What will happen next?

After this event, the phone rang, it was the police (I think), telling us to go to the bunker for safety measures. My family only sent the kids there, while the rest were harking the news. The bunker doesn’t look as much of you might imagine it. It was just like a regular room, just with thicker walls than usual, and a metallic door with some wood texture integrated to it to make it more aesthetic. Nothing happened. Thank God!

We couldn’t do much, just wait. I hate waiting. When will it end? What are we going to do? What if a missile will hit my home? Am I going to live? Those were the only things that came through my mind. At this age, you don’t really understand the situation. You just want it to end.

The worst of it was hearing the bombs striking on the ground. The stronger the sound, the greater the chance that they could have hit me. One time, we were eating at a relative’s house, when we hear a missile striking just a few meters (like 200 meters or so). When you hear it, you tremble. I still can handle myself when hearing strong noises. Especially when you know that the people who fired it had the mere intentions to harm you. It’s scary.

As a kid, I wasn’t conscious about what were the people on the other side experiencing. War is selfish. The only thing that you worry about is if either you and your loved ones are ok. Wars pull out the worst of everybody; it’s game of life or death. Were the media and the government treat you as a number, just another one from the mass. You feel insignificant. The media never talks about how both sides suffered, that both had lost something, something valuable; the dignity of life. The media just shows the suffering of the side that they are in favor with, like if the other people don’t deserve to be heard nor deserve to be mourned the loss of their loved ones, the loss of their people.

No one never wins a war, because what can you gain by killing somebody? In this conflict, both sides lost the value of life, the understanding that for every person killed in the conflict, there was someone who loved them, people who wanted to see them grow and enjoy life, as anyone should. As an individual who experienced this event, it motivates me to create a better future for the coming generations. A future based in love, respect, tolerance, and most important, peace. A future where the past doesn’t meet the future.

In Search Of My Identity…

What would you tell I someone would ask you about your heritage and nationality? For most, it is a simple question, but for others, like me, there is a full story to be told, or to be more specific, an article to be written.

I remember as a kid I never asked myself what is my heritage; nonetheless, it wasn´t something that my friends would talk about. At that age, we see each other as human beings. What a nice thing, isn’t it?

It wasn’t until I was about fourteen that it hit me hard. What was I? I remember that it started when I was hanging out with some friends while visiting Israel. We got up to a point in the conversation were everyone was mentioning their heritage. I really didn’t know what to say, so I just told the ones that I remember my parents would mention some times. I am Bulgarian and half Iranian- I said. Everyone looked at me as if I said some kind of sorcery or something. What did I said that made them react like this? I guess that being Iranian and Bulgarian isn’t cool…

After that experience, my interest to learn about my roots emerged. I really wanted to know where my ancestors came from. I always tell everybody that I am Israeli, which in fact I am. But as a person that comes from a family of immigrants, I needed to acknowledge my heritage to understand better what I am. So after talking with family members and researching a little, So long story short, I got into the conclusion that I was part Iranian, Persian, Iraqi, Algerian or Moroccan, and Bulgarian. I am really proud about it, regardless about what other people may think.

Knowing my heritage confused me. I always considered myself as white, but suddenly I faced a new reality, a reality were I was just one forth white. As a kid in Israel, I grew with mostly European people (as I can remember). My two best friends in first grade were British and Russian. I basically grew in a really white environment. While living in Beijing, people wanted to take a picture with me just because I looked white. And to be honest, I looked white.

Throughout the years I’ve learned to stop labeling myself for my own sanity. But after stopping labeling my heritage, I got another question to be answered: “What nationality I consider myself the most?” My sanity had to be set apart for the quest of finding my nationality; what I thought to be my identity. To start, I can’t consider myself a hundred percent Israeli. I have been living in Mexico most of my life and I have lived in China for four years. I just realized that I’ve lived more time abroad than in Israel, the country were I was born and were my family came from. I will also won’t serve in the army, which makes me feel less of an Israeli.

After living that much time in Mexico, friends started asking me when am I going to start my nationalization process. I never know how to answer it. What can I say to them, that I don’t feel Mexican enough to put-on-paper this identity? This makes me feel like not having a nationality whatsoever, but that would be too easy! The world doesn’t work like that. Living in a world with no nationalities is far too utopic to happen, so back to reality.

I think that in my case, neither my heritage nor my nationality does completely represent my identity. I’ve embraced the culture of my heritage and the beautiful places that I’ ve lived in; I can’t just fixate in just one. The answer for my heritage might have been already solved, but my national identity is still unknown; I don’t feel completely Israeli, nor Mexican, and even Chinese, so the answer to this might be far ahead or even non-existent. But at the end of the day the thing that I am sure about my identity is that I am a person who wants to know more about himself and about his surroundings. A person that has a message to share, the search for his identity.

What I learned about poverty in Mexico’s second largest city

For the past ten years I have been living in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city, which is also one of the fastest growing cities in the region, hence, earning its unofficial name as the Silicon Valley of Latin America. I want to first clarify that the purpose of this article is to show a personal experience in regards of the situation and to show a face to this problem, rather than just numbers.

As an expat residing in Guadalajara, for the majority of time I have been blinded from the reality that many people in this fast pacing city deal as their reality. A reality that is so raw that forces its poorest inhabitants to be involved in either the consumption of drugs or the illegal commercialization of it to escape poverty.

It wasn’t until 2016’s Spring Break where I went, together with a couple of classmates, to one of the most impoverished communities in the city called “El Rehilete”, which basically means in English “The Windmill”. Another thing that you need to take into consideration about this community is that it is an illegal settlement, which is a result of the immigration of indigenous people to the city for better job opportunities in an area that was not predetermined by the government to become a residential area.

The reason of my visit was to introduce some educational projects that will guide its residents towards a better future. So to be more specific, we gave a first aid course, a course about how to prepare soaps and toothpastes, and a course about how to prepare your own compost and urban orchard, while at the same time making integrative activities for the children of the community so that they could let their parents assist the courses while they interact with other children of their community.

So in order to make a presence in “El Rehilete”, we went from house to house to promote our activities and gain interest from the residents of the community. So each morning we would do that for two hours or so.

Everything was so new to me. All the houses were built by using recycled materials such as tires, wood panels, and other types of materials that most of us would consider rubbish. Also, derby was everywhere, thus to protect houses from flooding when rain hits the area. There weren’t much cars though, which really denounced the ones who had one, and also that most of the them were polarized (a clear indication of narc involvement in Mexico). Another thing that I noticed is the huge business of cockfighting. While walking on the streets we saw some “cholos” preparing their rooster for a future fight. It can be considered a really important factor in people’s life in the area due to the fact that it can boost some revenue for the families that participate in this violent event. Another thing that I noticed is the “flying people” which was an acronym given by some kids in the community to the junkies/ alcoholics, which you could usually see them prowl throughout the streets at every moment of the day. So from this experience comes my first learning about the poverty in Mexico; people are escaping their reality by drugs and violent activities such as cockfights and being involved in dealing with drugs.

I learned that most people get into drugs by not even wanting to and by a relative young age due to hunger. Yes, by hunger. People inhale thinners and other substances to get high to forget about their hunger and survive another day. This addiction can develop I’m the consumption of marihuana, heroin, or cocaine. So basically if you don’t have money you either need to become the consumer or the provider.

Another thing that I learned is that although drug consumption is a prominent problem that has affected the community of “El Rehilete” , it is still part for the no ending cycle of poverty, which would be the main cause of what the residents of the community are experiencing on a daily basis. So basically, if you don’t go to school, you cannot get a higher paying job, if you don’t have that job you cannot pay for basic services, and if you don’t have basic services such as water and food, you can’t send your kids to school (they don’t accept kids who do not look clean at school) and you will need to drug your kids so that they won’t feel the hunger, and this goes on and on…

I also learned that a great amount of residents are willing to take action to change the unfortunate situation they are living in; it was awe inspiring experience to see hope in their eyes while giving them the courses previously mentioned. People in the community accepted us and welcomed us as if it was our second home, and that’s that before arriving to the community we were bombarded by articles and governmental reports warning us about the situation in the community. For which I came with this last lesson and conclusion: numbers may scare, while an open heart attracts love and hope. So in order to create change in impoverished areas, we need to start looking up to the community’s faces rather than its numbers. And don’t get me wrong, it’s plausible to refer numbers to have a more objective analysis in regards of the situation in there; however, if we want to improve the quality of life of these people, we should start providing them with a solution based on a face to face contact.