Normally I get pretty excited about traveling to new countries and cultures but for a few reasons the excitement just didn’t hit this time round. Not even when we were about to board the plane. In fact looking at the huge CO2 emitting machine that was about to whisk me half way round the world made me feel pretty bad, what the Swedes call Flygskam.
Less than 48 hours before, I had joined the local Ashburton School Strike for Climate and felt super proud of many of my students for their passion and concern for our planet. Their chant ‘eat less meat, use your feet’ made me smile. If only I could use my feet… or my bike… or a train to get to where I was going. It seemed so wrong to get on a plane… but there’s no alternative if you live in New Zealand and want to travel abroad.
I try and weigh up in my mind the things I do that contribute positively to my climate impact ledger – I choose to bike and rarely drive a car, we grow what food we can & eat a plant based diet (aside from eggs from our own chooks), we are making a concerted effort to reduce waste and consumption and minimise domestic travel (no flights this year)… and the biggest positive of all when it comes to our climate impact is that we don’t have any kids.
BUT long-haul flying really is a big baddie on the negative side of that ledger. Sigh. We have offset our carbon by donating to million metres – choosing to support a project not far from us, a metre of riparian planting for every tonne of carbon. This helps a little but flygskam I think is here to stay… our international travel days may be numbered.
Another reason excitement was lacking was that we were starting a trip in Israel – a country I’ve never wanted to travel in, largely because I find the political and historical situation so disheartening. Sure we’ve traveled to other countries with challenging political and historical contexts, but this one upsets me more than any other. The only reason we’re starting here is that it was cheaper to fly to Tel Aviv and travel overland to Jordan than to fly there. We figured seeing as we were flying to Israel we may as well look around before heading to Jordan.
More than 40 hours after we left home, we finally touched down in Israel, got off the plane and walked along the airbridge into the terminal at Ben Gurion Airport. I didn’t feel even a little buzz or a sense of excitement like I would normally, which I found strange.
If you’ve ever landed at Christchurch International airport you’ll know that the air bridges and walls of the terminal as you enter feature spectacular photographs of wonderful places in New Zealand. These pictures inject in the weary traveler a sense of excitement at what they’re about to discover and cause any kiwi’s heart to swell, knowing they get to call that stunning country home.
The pictures on the airbridge into Israel inspired no such sense of excitement. Instead, my discomfort and unease about traveling here grew with each step, as one after the other the pictures promoted some kind of Christian Zionist organisation. In the past I have lived with and met people who have been obsessed with Israel – believing the modern state of Israel is a continuation of Biblical Israel and therefore should enjoy special privileges. There are Christians who support the State of Israel and its policies, who give money and time to the Zionist cause, who believe that all the Jews must come back to the modern state of Israel before Jesus will return to earth. I definitely do not share their theology and was not impressed by reminders of it on the air bridge.
Israel is significant to people of many faiths, but how people can view the modern state of Israel as a holy country troubles me. Its very foundation is based on a false pretext: ‘a country without a people for a people without a country,’ and this has led to much hurt and conflict.
When I think of Israel I can’t help but think of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were expelled from their land or forced to flee to make way for the creation of the state of Israel. I think of those regular people who’d lived here for centuries, their children and grandchildren now living under military occupation or living as refugees in other countries with little or no hope of returning to the lands their families once owned. I think of the Israeli settlements in Palestine and the breaches of international law, the ongoing injustices and human rights breaches committed by the Israeli government and it all makes me so terribly sad.
The history of the Jews, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries is also incredibly sad. After suffering unthinkable persecution, having a land to call their own where they could live without fear was certainly an appealing prospect. And not just appealing for Jewish people, but also for European countries whose growing nationalism often couldn’t find room for its Jewish citizens. Countries who also had many displaced people at the close of WWII.
I wish there really had been a land ‘without a people’ which the Jewish people could claim and settle but instead, however inadvertently for the individuals who moved here, the oppressed became the oppressor. The powerless became powerful and as a State have wielded that power in unjust and illegal ways over Palestinians. The flag I see flying everywhere here is a constant reminder of this for me, as are the separation barriers, those lengthy concrete walls – so confronting.
So while this country has incredible places to explore, people to meet, food to enjoy and history to learn, I have to acknowledge the very mixed feelings that being here also brings up in me. These feelings won’t go away, so I will hold them all in my head and my heart and be as open as I can to what I might discover here.