Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s former president, who said in a letter to Mr. Obama: “Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.”
-New York Times 06/11/08
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said something on similar lines. “Your election raises in France, in Europe, and elsewhere in the world, an immense hope,” he said in a message that called Mr. Obama’s victory “brilliant” and his campaign “exceptional.” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called his victory “historic”
--New York Times 06/11/08
Being in Israel, i found it a real challenge to keep up with american politics and the election. Exspecially when internet was not easily accessiable to me. At the same time, before I came here i knew that this was going to be one of the most signficant elections of my 23 years of life. The question i think many people in Israel had before this election and still have after the fact is "Will Obama be a friend to Israel.." and also "Will the jewish american population vote be dependent on if the candiate was for or not for Israel.." I was asked that 2nd question a couple times since i've come here. My answer might have not been what they wanted but its because thats a hard one. With all the speculation though that Obama was not for Israel, i think it was a lot of made up speculation. I think people were not and are not sure what the future will bring and were willing to stick with what made sense to them. What do i think? I think that for there to be change, even if you don't know all the answers, you need to step outside the box.. Without taking a chance on something that has the potential to be the revolutionary answer everyone is asking for.
This election proved that people were ready to take that chance. People are ready to stray away from the past, with the hope of a better future. People are ready to look beyond color and hopefully look beyond gender. Its not race or gender that matter and i'm hoping that this election is going to begin spreading that idea. Although I had a hard time keeping up with t he election here, I've been trying now to read about the post election. Those two quotes came from this New York Times article i read called "Election Unleashes a flood of hope Worldwide." I never realized how signficant the american election was to people world wide until i read that article.
Nelson Mandala's quote in the article really struck a cord for me. Obama is the first african american president but he also opens up doors for people to realize that they can dream big. I think also that he is going to really have to prove himself in office, he is not just the first african american president but i think he is going to be a really signficant role model to a lot of people in the United states.
Yesterday i went to buy a newspaper in e nglish that would have the picture of Obama/Biden on the cover. Sadly the french stand did not have any left so i decided to buy a hebrew one with Obama on the cover. I thought about it after and realized a hebrew newspaper with him on the cover really descirbes my situation here. I stayed up the night before that until 4:30 in the morning with my roommate Jared watching cnn coverage on his computor, that was streaming in from his slingbox at home in California. Two and a half hours later I was woken up by the voice of Obama coming from my roommates computor, who was watching his live victory speech, Then i proceeded to go to Ulpan class where we spoke about the election in hebrew....
as i write this...Dana just came in here and told me the newspaper i bought yesterday was printed before Obama actually won. Kind of disappointing and this is what happens when you do not know enough words in hebrew.
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On that note.. I moved up to a higher ulpan class. I was in aleph and now i'm in bet. I am a little unsure of if this a good deciion but i'm really anxious to improve my speaking and comprehension and Mary uses a lot more vocab in her speaking. Although i don't always know what she is saying, i find i'm slowly improving my comprehsion and it makes me really happy. I find that i'm a lot more challenged to pick up vocab words in her class.
Since this blog is supposed to be about Israel...
This past sunday The Otzma 23 Be'er Sheva group went on a tiyul (trip) to learn about where we are living. The NEGAV. and learn we did. We started off our tiyul in a bedouin community school, where I learned more about the bedouin's then i ever have staying a bedouin tent and riding camels. Did you know there are only 7 bedouin villages that are recognized by the Israeli government? and that about 30 something other's are unrecognized and receive no electricty, transportation or water. This is a fact i was un aware of. If you drive down the roads you can see these unrecognized ones, that are usually made up of tents or tin builidings. Did you know that there used to be 65,000 bedouins in Israel and after one of the first wars, i think the war of independence, only 11,000 remained. We also went to visit one of the high schools there. It was pretty amazing to see. It is one of the biggest school apparently in Israel and children come to go to school there from everywhere, unrecongized and recongized villages. The principal told us how when he was in high school he ahd to go all the way to the galilee for school. To make this more understandable... Negav = South. Galilee = North. its far.
From there We contintued are tiyul by visiting dimona and visiting the community of black hebrews. There village has a sign that says "Welcome to the village of peace." I have no idea really how to explain them , except that well i felt like i was in some sort of alternate reality. All the children sound american. I was really confused until i learned there story. So about 40 something years ago about 400 African american's came from america, they started in Africa, trying to live off the land. In the end about 100 or so of them cam eto Israel. Years later they still live here, and live a vegan lifestyle and beleive in peace. The community is really interesting and I dont really know enough to tell you about it but i suggest you research it. Recently the Government made it mandatory for them to be a part of the Army. I was really in shock though, i had no idea this community even exhisted here and it makes me wonder how much more i dont know.....
Our tiyul ended by first, the bus driver running over some hose and almost breaking down the bus. We had to stop so he could get it out. 2nd, we went to visit the ben guiren institute and to see his gravesite. What was so signficant about this place was the silience. It over looks the most beautiful site and as we sat there and listened to the women speaking, it lacked the usual noise of cars and people. If ben Gurien were still alive he would not be very happy. He dreamt that the negav would be conguored and inhabitated by the jews immigrating to Israel... I see both sides. I see why he wanted this for israel, but maybe sometimes you need to leave things the way they are. Its from nature and silience, that inspiration is born from. I can imagine it must have been a disappointement when ben guiren gave up his postion to move to the negav and no one followed...
To conclude this... Today I'm going to Tel aviv with Jackie G. to run a race tommarow! There is a half marathon, 10 k and 5 k and we decided to run the 5k. I'm really excited about this and i think it will be a really cool experience. We are hoping that in February we might run a half marathon near the dead sea.
My feelings are that i've already come to israel, and why not do the things i wanted to do in the united states but didn't. This is the time for it.
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