After being somewhat on a high from my trip to Jordan, it didn’t take long for me to come back to reality. On Thursday night, the violence between Israel and Palestine, which since I’ve been here has only been present in Gaza, extended to Jerusalem.
After an Israeli military attack on Gaza last week killed 120 Palestinians, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem foolishly (and some Palestinians feel valiantly) responded by opening fire in a Jewish seminary, killing eight Israeli citizens.
The Jerusalem Center is located in East Jerusalem. Often when the violence gets bad in Gaza, we aren’t allowed into East Jerusalem or the Old City because many of the shop owners go on strike and the overall feeling of tension is just higher. This has happened a handful of times since we’ve been here, but even when we can’t go into East Jerusalem, we’ve always been able to go to West Jerusalem.
To hear that the violence happened in West Jerusalem shook us all a little more, and of course the sign “WEST JERUSALEM IS OFF LIMITS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE” went up right next to the more familiar “EAST JERUSALEM AND THE OLD CITY ARE OFF LIMITS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE” sign.
So, we’re locked in for the time being. It’s a good thing everyone stocked up on pirated (and legal by Jordanian law) DVDs in Jordan.
In case you’re interested in how the media shows bias, read this article about the shooting in Jerusalem and notice how the reporter chose not to mention the 120 dead Palestinians until the 27th (4th from the bottom) paragraph.
After an Israeli military attack on Gaza last week killed 120 Palestinians, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem foolishly (and some Palestinians feel valiantly) responded by opening fire in a Jewish seminary, killing eight Israeli citizens.
The Jerusalem Center is located in East Jerusalem. Often when the violence gets bad in Gaza, we aren’t allowed into East Jerusalem or the Old City because many of the shop owners go on strike and the overall feeling of tension is just higher. This has happened a handful of times since we’ve been here, but even when we can’t go into East Jerusalem, we’ve always been able to go to West Jerusalem.
To hear that the violence happened in West Jerusalem shook us all a little more, and of course the sign “WEST JERUSALEM IS OFF LIMITS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE” went up right next to the more familiar “EAST JERUSALEM AND THE OLD CITY ARE OFF LIMITS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE” sign.
So, we’re locked in for the time being. It’s a good thing everyone stocked up on pirated (and legal by Jordanian law) DVDs in Jordan.
In case you’re interested in how the media shows bias, read this article about the shooting in Jerusalem and notice how the reporter chose not to mention the 120 dead Palestinians until the 27th (4th from the bottom) paragraph.
2 comments:
yikes. hopefully, you'll be able to get out again soon. can you at least walk over to the mount of olives or hebrew university or something. it's so crazy how these revenge attacks are. hang in there. love you.
Thanks. For now, we're on total lockdown. We went on a group field trip last night to the Kotel Tunnels at the Western Wall so that was fun. Hopefully we'll be able to get out on our own soon. Love you too!
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