Love Thou Thy Land?

Love thou thy land, with love far-brought 

From out the storied past, and used

Within the present, but transfused

Thro' future time by power of thought;

I started my classes today with this quote by Tennyson. I’ve been thinking about nationalism a lot lately— in fact, ever since a Turkish student asked me in outrage why we are having a ceremony of international peace the week of Yom Hazikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut. “Isn’t it an excuse to celebrate Israel?” he demanded. “Where’s the Turkish memorial ceremony, after all the attacks happening there? Why did we have one for Paris and not for Ankara?”

How some of my students see it.

An hour later, the Brussels airport and metro were bombed, and in the midst of sympathetic pain, I found myself locked in the question of who we care about and why. Why was Brussels front-page news, but not as big as Paris, why is Ankara a headline nobody clicks on, and why does nobody know about the attack on the Ivory Coast or the fact that there have been continuous attacks in Israel since October? Do we have a moral responsibility to have equal outrage for every country? Or at least to ensure that our outrage does not follow gradations of race and religion, but rather of personal familiarity? Yeah, that seems like a good idea.  

And so I plopped Tennyson on the board and asked my students, “how important is caring for your country to you as a value?” They wrote furiously. As I circled the room, I noticed that one of the desks had pen ink etched into it: “Free Palestine.” On another desk it was written in pencil, and I rubbed it off with my thumb.

An Israeli, responding to the prompt, dared to share that he is proud of his country, and glad it has an army to protect it, and an Eastern European raised his hand in response.

“You are proud of the army, but it is a bad thing. There is nothing good about it at all.”

I interrupted him. “It keeps ISIS out of the West Bank.”

 

He paused, then backtracked to an earlier point, and I sat down at my desk to listen, angry at myself for breaking the mediator role, angry at the Israelis for their deference to the reigning political rhetoric at our school, angry at whatever kid had etched their political beliefs into the desks of the oppressor who dared teach them math and physics and English.

Among the other students, the Arab-Israelis delivered themselves of the fact that they consider themselves Palestinian first, Israeli never. One said, “Nationality is so important; it’s the thing you fight for.” While I appreciate her sentiment, I wish I’d thought to ask her about her use of words—how about the thing you live for? Or am I quibbling with words because her national identity lies in direct opposition to my own, and I want to make hers seem violent to delegitimize it? I would fight for two out of my three nationalities, if it came to protecting their sovereignty. And nobody would ever bother attacking Canada anyways.

Two students walked into class with Hitler mustaches drawn on their faces. I paused, then remembered that they were giving the class presentation today. It must be related. I should wait and see what it is. But… damn, I won’t forgive myself if it’s something awful. I moved over to them.

“Gentlemen, are you aware you have Hitler mustaches on your face?” I asked them. They assured me they were.

“Is your presentation in any way offensive?” They assured me it wasn’t.

“I’m assuming it’s along the lines of a Charlie Chaplin act.” They looked crestfallen.

“How did you know, Miss?” Call me psychic.

After their presentation, another student had to make up a missed presentation. She chose to discuss how ISIS recruitment videos compare to traditional advertising. The Arabic speakers in the class cringed visibly as they heard the chants in the video. Another slam right in the identity for our class.

Finally, I asked the class, “are you uncomfortable? Does talking about nationalism make you uncomfortable?” About two-thirds of the class raised their hands. I raised my hand.

We have come together here, at this school, with all our various fascinating intersections, and we spend a lot of time in class talking about our respective languages, and foods, and even sometimes religions, but when it comes down to it, we can’t talk about how we love our countries themselves. The Russians and Ukrainians are buddies, but there are topics they carefully skirt; the Quebecois and Canadians are best friends, but ignore the topic of separatism; the Israelis and Palestinians feel most comfortable together, but talk carefully around their nationhoods.

I fit somewhere in between here...

Well? What’s the answer? How do I, as of yet uncomfortably wriggling between my three nationalities, help passionate teenagers make sense of the fact that their nations may be mutually exclusive, that the existence of their identities seems to demand the cessation of others’ (but this I don’t believe), that we grew up taught that the Other is dangerous and morally bankrupt, and are politely ignoring evidence that seems to indicate that this is so as we move quietly around each other through the corridors of the high school? 

I guess, for now, I’ll just follow Tennyson’s advice:

But pamper not a hasty time,

Nor feed with crude imaginings

The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings,

That every sophister can lime.

…

Make knowledge circle with the winds;

…

Cut Prejudice against the grain.

Sting Like A Bee

Over the weekend, one of my Arab students from East Jerusalem brought a Turkish and a Ukrainian friend home with him. They went to see the Western Wall Friday night, and as they stood there snapping photos, a Jewish man approached them.

“Do you want to come to my house for Shabbat dinner?”

“We’re not Jewish,” my students explained.

“That’s okay,” responded the man.

“I’m Arab,” my student told him.

“Come, it will be fun,” the man answered. So they went.

(Important Digression: The biology teacher and I have since had a talk with him about stranger danger).

Apparently, they had a great time, humming along to the blessings and eating yummy food. As I passed my student on the way back from lunch, I riffed to him, “I heard you converted to Judaism over the weekend.”

He nodded and grinned. “Yeah, Ms., um, konnichiwa.”

I guess he learned a lot.

To ward off the stress that is choking both me and the students as exams loom, I have started a trend: on sunny days I take a Frisbee outside during every class break and lob it at whatever student is an appropriate distance from me. Each time, a gaggle of kids joins, and we run around the quad with the sun beating down. At one point it landed on the roof, and as a student went up there to get it, I tackled the physics teacher on his way back to the office, turning him towards the Mediterranean to admire its beauty instead of seeing which kid was on the roof. After about five seconds of stuttered description he asked, “there’s something behind us which we’re not supposed to be seeing, right?”

I like teaching with smart colleagues.

My first-year class held a philosopher’s chair seminar on media ethics. Most fascinating to me was that when the Israeli Arabs were given the question of what the media should protect more: transparency or security (they’d read about Anat Kamm), they ended up, volubly, on the security side. They used examples from the recent Gazan war, where when Israelis found out about the tunnels being dug underneath their homes, they deserted their houses for fear of midnight attack, leaving Hamas open to digging more tunnels deeper into Israel without observation or disruption. I was surprised that even the most politically aggressive nationalist Palestinian kids still felt that Israeli protection was more important than Israeli media transparency.

Students are studying speeches in another class, and today they dressed up in suits, saris, and whatever other paraphernalia seemed to make sense to them as they pretended to be prime minister of India, dictator of Zimbabwe, and opposition leader of Canada, among other public figures. Their speeches were stirring. They used techniques we’d learned in class to make passionate cases for their cause, but more than that, I think they also really liked the dramatics. Each and every one of them has a flair for the spotlight.

I’ve switched my attention signal in my lower classes again. We’re doing call-and-response, and I chose Muhammad Ali. When I call “float like a butterfly!” the class shouts back at me, “sting like a bee!” and then falls gleefully silent. Once they get bored of it, I think I will switch to “You killed my father!” and have the class respond, “prepare to die!”

I closed out my second year class today. After this, they go into mocks, then optional review sessions, and final exams. It was our last time together as a full class, and I’ve come to love these kids; although they may manifest as the personified reification of the letter after “X”, they are also adorable. We stood in a circle outside, throwing yarn from one person to the next as each in turn delivered a goodbye, and then cut it apart and twined a piece around our ankles or wrists. So there’s a reason for the sloppy piece of thread around my ankle for the next few days: in the words of one of my students, it’s to show we’re all entwined.