gaza war soapbox

How do you know that a tree makes a noise when it falls in a forest with nobody in earshot?
How do you know that the rest of the world exists when you are not looking at it?

When I went to Cairo in ’07, I was totally blown away by the crazy place. Cairo is not very far from here. It only took all-day on a bus trip to get there at 3am. But that’s only because you have to drive through Eilat as it would be too dangerous to go through the Gaza strip. And probably also because we got held up somewhere in the middle of Sinai for over 2 hours arguing about bakshish (rub fingers and thumb together).

Cairo is unlike any other place I have ever been to. Not the shuk. That's familiar. They sell the same drums, camels, keffiyeh, and trinkets I can get in Jerusalem. And they are suprisingly uncreative with the pyramid souvineers. The same "my friend, my friend" attitude that is customary in the middle east and I hear India though I wouldn't know haven't ever been. The same tea with mint we drink here. The same nargila although they call it something else there.
The difference was the streets. As many lanes as lorries, vans, cars, camels, bikes, donkeys, and people that can squeeze into. No-one stops at a red light. Like EVER. You cross the road because you've got the balls to do it. You've just got to cross and hope that the driver values his donkey more than life itself and doesn't fancy your blood on its nose. A couple of times my brother saw my life flash before him and yanked me back on the kerb. But he didn't convert so hasn't got the hutzpah that comes with being Jewish. And what really amazed me was that all this daily balagan (*chaos) was going on 250 miles south west of my life! And its been going on for like EVER! It's going on RIGHT NOW!

But it's quiet in my apartment. I can't hear the honking horns of Cairo. I wouldn't even know that there's a war going on 44 miles from my posh neighbourhood. That yesterday morning a rocket fell 14 miles away and injured a 3 month old baby. That every day for the last 8 years rockets launched in Gaza and fall within a 50 mile radius from my house. So how do I know? Unlike when I was 14 and I looked out of a Surrey school window in a History lesson and thought "wow, there's a war going on in the gulf and I can't feel it", I do feel it. I know that my husband will get called up next month if its still going on. I know what that means because we were at war with Lebanon 2 years ago. I know that the cubemate is at the border. And that the finance guy is in there. I know my husband's cousin's husband is in there. They put a box up at work next to the lifts asking for any spare army equipment that the male workforce is likely to have. My cubemate called his boss and said "make sure HR know I'm here...you get chocolates..." We have the news on all night. With the news we visit the shiva (*wake) of the killed soldiers and the hospital beds of the injured soldiers. We discuss it endlessly and we have the news internet sites on all the time. We're all nervous. We're all conscious that Israel gets a bad press for this kind of thing. And that no-one said anything to Russia about Georgia or the massacre last week in the Congo. We feel bad about the innocent victims but at the same time we know that these terrorists don't think twice before hiding behind a school child as body armour. We know that if another country had rockets fired upon them every day that they would retaliate. So we do and most of us want Gaza cleaned up. We left there 3 years ago and they are still blaming us for every problem in their infrastructure. Nobody is on the television shouting about how much money and how many chances they've had to build themselves a viable country there. They want more. They want it all. They want what was offered to them in the UN partitian plan of 47. And then they want the rest. They want us in the sea. So, forgive us for defending ourselves and for fighting back a bit.

Maybe you don't see what's happening here or maybe you don't see this at all. After all, you can't see it from your house.

PS> I bloody loved Cairo.