A Mile in Their Shoes - How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less

"This isn’t fun, this is carnage!"

          —How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less (2010)

As Sarah Glidden notes in her critically acclaimed memoir, swimming in the Dead Sea isn’t all fun and games. Coincidentally, neither is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So, in all seriousness, we decided for this week’s blog to take a closer look at Glidden’s work, which documents her experiences on a birthright trip to Israel. Along the way, she considers the global and personal effects of the conflict and ultimately finds herself reevaluating her initial opinion of her surroundings. By being in a war-torn country steeped in blood and history and interacting with its people, Glidden starts seeing her preconceptions about it break down. It isn’t difficult to take sides, yet understanding both sides’ stories is easier said than done. Glidden learns this the hard way and takes us along for the ride as she discovers the value of walking a mile in other people’s shoes. Hold on tight!

Throughout Glidden’s memoir, she highlights the cartoony look of her characters using vibrant hues and clear lines, giving us a filter of childlike innocence for everything she sees and hears. After all, in this foreign country that she understands next to nothing about, her ignorance is as good as a child’s. In portraying her experiences through watercolor rather than photojournalism, Glidden also inserts herself into imagined scenarios,

transports herself to hundreds of years ago,

and even talks to ghosts of the past.

By painting her wild “what-ifs” and regretful “if-onlys”, she shares a part of herself with us through her art.

Beautiful art aside, Glidden’s journey starts off pretty problematic. Despite having extensively researched the conflict and considering herself quite liberal, she takes off for Israel with the narrow-minded outlook that the Israelis will brainwash her into sympathizing with them. Also problematic is the fact that she expects to cleanly and conveniently separate good from evil. We see this mentality when on the tour bus, she mentally acts out a courtroom case of “Birthright is trying to brainwash me vs. Birthright is actually pretty reasonable.” Glidden escapes into the courtroom within her mind to declare a clear winner and loser, but in reality, there is no way to draw such a fine line.

However, her visit to Independence Hall, where Israel declared its independence in 1948 (see below), becomes a turning point for her view of the war.

The Israelis’ strong will to continue struggling for their country finally hits Glidden, and she has an emotional breakdown because she feels torn between her sympathy for Palestinians and connection with Israel. Instead of covering her ears, she begins opening her heart to the people and the multifaceted stories they carry. At the same time, she wonders, “[I]s this a story in which there are just no ‘good guys’?”

Her cynicism gives way when her mental courtroom empties out, and she stops trying to compartmentalize the conflict and take sides. Multiple conversations she has with people of different opinions (from a supposedly anti-gay guy who actually is anti-marriage to a supposedly idealist and escapist oleh who actually is really self-aware) topple her predispositions. Rather than constantly insist she’s morally and politically correct, Glidden learns to accept her differences with others. Through comprehending their thought processes and experiences, she gains the context to look at the bigger picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As skeptical as she is at first, Glidden undergoes a lot of change over the course of her birthright by witnessing Israel for herself. Up until then, she’d pored over books and academic material, regurgitating cold hard facts instead of formulating her own opinion based on a place and people she had no experience with. She couldn’t reasonably have a viewpoint without being able to fathom life thousands of miles away or setting foot in Israel first.

That’s all well and good, but the ending leaves a lot to be desired. Despite the fact that much of the trip has revolved around question-answering, we get the sense that Glidden still hasn’t cemented her stance on the conflict. What gives?

Ultimately, the journey towards clarity and understanding transcends the 208 pages we’re offered. It’s a journey that forever continues because we can never stop learning more of what we don’t know. Yes, maybe like Glidden, we’ll be at some arbitrarily higher level of understanding but ironically be more confused than ever. And maybe we don’t know where to go from here on out. But that’s all the more reason to keep our minds and hearts open.

- Amy Wang, Jen Song, Kris Griffin, & Gina Chung