If you could travel halfway around the globe, beyond comfortable Western Europe — beyond Eastern Europe, beyond the Mediterranean — to spend ten days in one of the most politically volatile regions in the world, a place most Americans only see on CNN, what would you walk away with? For me, it was a totally new perspective.
I flew to New York, boarded a 747 packed with other college students and braved a 10.5-hour direct flight to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. A week and a half later, I handed my passport back to U.S. customs, along with seven rolls of undeveloped film and a notebook crammed with notes packed away in my suitcase.
When I mention where I went in passing conversations, the first question I’m usually asked is: “Isn’t it dangerous there?” This is something that I cannot completely explain, because before I had actually been there, I also found it nearly impossible to grasp how people could bring up children, go to work, and lead everyday lives in the face of such persistent threats.
Israel is a country at perpetual war. So obviously it can be very dangerous there. Our group had two armed guards with us at all times. But from my perspective, it is not a country that actually feels particularly dangerous.
What I found amazing is that the people of Israel have not hardened themselves to death, warfare and destruction, as one would expect. The attitude is similar to the approach of a quintessential Manhattanite who doesn’t necessarily debate that New York City is dangerous (you might get mugged, shot, etc.), but chooses not to think about the danger — the possibility of a bomb exploding anywhere, or the country coming under attack, for example — occurring on a day-to-day basis.
In both cases, the danger is very real, but simultaneously distant. For the first five days, we saw little evidence of terrorism except for incredibly tight security measures in odd places, such as malls. After our group left Tel Aviv, a bomb was detonated at a bus stop outside the city in a suburb that we had passed only days before. The moment was startling, like looking in the mirror and seeing your own mortality.

One of the most touching experiences I had in the country came from a fortunate interaction with a tour guide at Independence Hall. Our docent was a woman, about my mother’s age, who told us point blank that she did not want her children to serve in the army (2-3 years of military service is compulsory in Israel after high school graduation, and college is postponed until later) but she added that it would be unfair to ask that they be given exceptions, and that they would probably be fine. However, her voice betrayed her statement and I could sense her suppressed fear. Still, I also noticed the strong confidence at her core that so many of these people tap into.
Although Israel is a country where people cannot dig more then a few inches down before uncovering archeological remains, the country is, for the most part, shockingly Westernized. For me, the phrase “Middle East” conjured images of crowded dirty cities, bumpy roads, camels and people in ancient fashion. These images could not be further from the truth. The country seems more like Southern California than anything else. The cities feel like incarnations of American ones with a slight twist, and the citizens dress more fashionably than most in Eugene. The only camels we ended up seeing belonged to the Bedouin (one of the last Arab nomadic tribes) who left them tied up outside their tents next to their cars.
One of the few exceptions to this seeming normality was the prevalence of soldiers. Having armed forces so prevalent constantly breaks the illusion that these cities could just be San Diego. The Israeli army is everywhere in the country, and it is as much a part of the youth culture as, say, going away to school for the “college experience” is for Americans. Twenty-year-old Israelis, dressed in green fatigues with semi-automatic weapons strung around their necks, stroll around tourist destinations (the army takes the soldiers on sightseeing tours of the country as part of their duty) talking on their cell phones. It is a surreal sight, made even more so by the soldiers’ close proximity to my own age.