‘Treachery isn’t a perspective’ : Boycotting Israel in Lebanon

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  • ‘Treachery isn’t a perspective’: Boycotting Israel in Lebanon | MadaMasr
    https://www.madamasr.com/en/2018/04/29/opinion/u/treachery-isnt-a-perspective-boycotting-israel-in-lebanon/?platform=hootsuite

    It is common for me to hear friends in Lebanon exchanging their experiences of meeting an Israeli for the first time. Many stories include feelings of shock, horror, anger and disgust.

    My first experience with an Israeli was during my teenage years in the 1990s. I was at Cairo International Airport, waiting for my flight back to Beirut, when two slightly older young men sat next to me on high bar stools for coffee. They spoke to me in English and I chatted with them. When one of them told me, “You’re beautiful, you look Israeli,” I realized they were Israelis. I shuddered, my mind froze, I felt a lump in my throat and, in that moment, I despised my vulnerability almost as much as I despise Israel.

    I yelled at them nonsensically. They told me that they had packed their belongings and left Palestine — their place of birth — because they reject the settler occupation upon which Israel is founded and have no desire to serve in its military forces. But I couldn’t keep listening to them; this very act of communication seeming akin to acceptance, defeat. A crime. My entire existence at this moment felt like a crime. For many years to come, I was ashamed of this treachery because they had sat next to me at that airport coffee bar, and I was only 15 years old.

    This is neither a healthy space for expressing hostility toward Israel, nor a healthy mode of being.