Visiting America Now

For months before our family trip to the US, I obsessed about what California family camp would be like. I knew there would be campers from the Bay Area, and having consumed distressing news about anti-Zionism and antisemitism and seeing scary videos of robot-like chants at protests, I worried. Would there be animosity? Or worse?

The camp director said it would be fine. Still, I worried – especially after reading in the Bay Area Jewish News that Jewish parents were pulling their kids out of Oakland public schools because of anti-Semitism there.  (I subscribed so I could keep scaring myself with headlines.)

I checked in with a friend and a couple of relatives who live in Berkeley and Oakland and they all said, Don’t worry. We avoid campus and don’t encounter anything threatening.

Still, I worried.

In the end, we had five wonderful days at camp. Israel barely came up. True, I didn’t attend the meet and greet as I did last year when I was the person who came from the farthest away, but in conversations I had in which people found out I am from Israel, the typical reaction was: “Oh. Israel. That’s far!”

The first time I revealed what I thought might be my secret, I got a neutral response. A bit later in the conversation I told my interlocutor, a young mom, that if she had any questions about Israel and the current situation, I’d be happy to think with her about it. She said, Oh, I have lots of questions. Then she pointed to her five-year-old and I understood that she wanted to wait till she was out of range. That time never came, but she did tell me that she knew that any conflict that long had to be complex. That there was no black and white. Relief!

I mentioned the hopeful podcast, Unapologetic, The Third Narrative to her and when I said the presenters were two Palestinian-Israelis, it occurred to me she might not know that such people exist. Sure enough, she didn’t.

Such a basic piece of information to us but if she didn’t know – and she was a teacher – then I would bet more than half the protesters that steadily featured in our news feeds also don’t know that. What else don’t they know?

The other pleasant surprises at camp: A kid named Orly, whose great grandfather had lived in Israel. A woman named Maayan whose parents were Israeli. A guy named Rafi whose mom is a member of Jewish Voices for Peace; he said he has a hard time communicating with her.

During the rest of our trip – to Los Angeles, Colorado, Massachusetts and New York — I encountered no anti-Israel sentiments. Maybe I was just lucky and all the people I encountered were part of that majority of Americans the Pew Research Center found to be understanding of Israel. But the experience made me wonder if the pro-Palestinian-anti-Zionist feelings in the US are less ubiquitous than the media would have us believe. I can only hope.

I can’t end any piece without: #bringthemhomenow!