The "Situation" - TURN ON THE NEWS

So a lot has been going on over here for the past two weeks. I don't know if you in the U.S. have seen anything about Jerusalem/Israel on the news, or if they are even sharing anything over there that is going on here. Basically we have had a wave of small terrorist attacks almost daily for the past 13 days. Palestinians are attacking Israelis on the streets, and it is mostly young teenagers stabbing or throwing rocks (to kill) at obviously religious individuals or at Israeli security/police enforcers. Tourists/foreigners are not the target, although at one incident after an attack between a few people, a crowd must have gathered and a man with a gun shot into the crowd of tourists - nobody in that crowd was hurt.

I try to remember every day to grab a newspaper. I have been cutting out headlines and articles to take home. I've put pictures of most of them in this post (there are a lot, but at least read all of the bold headlines). There are articles about general violence, the incidents, about fear of a third intifada, the reaction of the state, and at the end I've mentioned a few things we have heard from locals about what is going on.

Check out these front pages!!

 

 

Our Jerusalem Center posts security updates to the BYUJC page here if you want to read a more technical description of what is going on and what they are doing with us. We haven't been able to leave the center on our own for over a week, and we haven't been allowed in the Old City or in East Jerusalem for over two weeks. East Jerusalem is the Palestinian neighborhoods, and West Jerusalem is the Israeli neighborhoods. Maybe this map will help visualize:

Yes, we live in the middle of Palestinian neighborhoods. There have been no serious incidents in those around our school, though. Most are taking place in the Old City and then in random places around West Jerusalem (because that's where the Israelis are).

 

There's this word that has been going around in conjunction with the incidents: INTIFADA. It has taken me a while to understand what is meant by intifada. The definition definition is "shaking off". So I think the word is used because it is the Palestinians wanting to "shake off" the occupation of the Israelis in "their" land. It is a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. 

The first intifada was from 1986-1991, and the second was from 2000-2005. The first involved mainly stone throwing at the Israeli police and army. The second involved more gun fights and suicide bombings, etc.

I can't quite figure out what amount of violence is "required" to determine if we are going to be seeing a "third intifada" here soon.  "The mass support from Palestinians across towns and villages as well as across social divisions is the distinctive characteristic of an intifada" (see source here). It seems like people are obsessed with this NAME...who cares what it is called while people are getting hurt and killed either way?? This country is swarmed with media--there are jokes that this is a "five star area" for reporters. They get escorted right into the thick of things in safety because everybody wants to hear about and see the violence. I think labeling something as "the third intifada" makes it look that much more serious, which means more evil people will become involved in doing evil things. SCARY.

 


















Then we have the RESPONSES...articles talking about what to do about the violence, articles about social media, and then political cartoons describing the situation.

The tweet going with the above article: "Your knife is your freedom; history and geography demonstrate that Palestine was and is a knife in the throat of the Zionists."

 

 

 

 

 

And then we just have other stories to add to the pile...a 15 year old girl ran away from home, texting her parents saying that they would hear about her on the news soon. She was headed to Jerusalem, intending to stab Jewish soldiers and the police.

This boy was said to be killed on the news, but was alive the whole time. He killed two people. THIS LITTLE BOY.

We have seen headlines about a bombing in the capital of Turkey, then there was a follow-up article about how ISIS is the main suspect behind it.

 

There is mention in a few of the articles about this story from early this week of a Palestinian man who attacked an Israeli couple and their baby in the streets of the Old City. He stabbed the husband to death, and stabbed both the woman and her baby. The injured woman holding her injured baby staggered through the street looking for help while Palestinian onlookers spat on her and told her she should have died (according to her testimonial). A man came out of his shop to try and calm down the commotion, and then Palestinian stabbed that man to death. The Israeli police shot the Palestinian to death. The headline (not in these Israeli papers which we have, but in other major news) was something along the lines of "Palestinian shot and killed; two others killed". They make it look like the Palestinian was murdered...but he was the murderer!! 

From our "Israel" class, our professor changed the time of his lecture because he felt more comfortable walking his little kids partway to school rather than having them walk on their own since they live near an Arab neighborhood. So he came at 7-9pm, then he told us the next day that when he was going home at night from East Jerusalem (where BYU is) back into West Jerusalem, he had to go through two different road block checkpoints where Israeli police shined a flashlight to check out the inside of his car.

Our "Palestine" professor said he thinks things will just get worse and worse, that the Palestinians are sick of living as they are under the Israeli laws. They make it really hard for them to enjoy life here.

Someone at church said they talked to a local who has lived here for over 60 years who told them that he has never seen it this bad here.

Media is crazy, so again, all these newspaper articles are taken from an Israeli paper, the Jerusalem post. They are clearly on one side. We read these papers and the jpost website, as well as ynetnews. Any day, any hour, any minute of the day you can see that someone was just shot and killed. The headline on jpost I just saw grabbing that link is: "Third attack of the day: terrorist killed after stabbing border police in Hebron". We went to Hebron a few weeks ago- it is in the occupied West Bank.

Anyways. Take what these headlines are worth, remember the media is and always will be skewed, but try to look for news going on in Jerusalem. IT'S CRAZY. Pray for the people to calm down!! As for me and the rest of the BYUJC group, we are totally safe here on lockdown...our security is very strict because they care about us. They are capable of anything, and we feel very safe. 

TURN ON THE NEWS.