The Israeli journalist and TV producer Avi Issacharoff looked around our Tel Aviv meeting room and sighed. “The reality is so complex to understand, it’s so difficult, that for someone who comes from abroad, it’s Mission Impossible,” he said.
I was someone from abroad, he was describing his homeland, and although it was my second time in this country, I already was wrestling once again with its impossibilities.
“Even for journalists coming from abroad who are staying here in Israel, living here,” Issacharoff continued, “it takes years and years in order to get what is going on around here.
“You need to show the complexity of the conflict. There are no blacks and whites here. Only different shades of gray.” He joked ruefully, “Maybe even more than fifty.”
Our trip to Israel and Jordan had been in the works for a year. For the first week, I was going for a meeting of the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds, hosted by the Scriptwriters Guild of Israel. Who knew back when we planned it that we’d arrive in the middle of an escalation of violent confrontations between Palestinians and Israelis that many feared would turn into a third intifada?
As we flew into Tel Aviv last month, this new Palestinian uprising against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza had been in full swing for more than a week, but unlike past revolts, primarily this was a series of random stabbings by frustrated, angry Palestinian youth, mostly young men but some women, too, urged on in part by social media. Many of these turned into suicide missions as the assailants were gunned down within moments by authorities or in some cases, civilians.