We are not our countries
A lesson from traveling while "Israeli" after a war
In December of 2008, I had been living in Tel Aviv for only a few months when the Middle East conflict erupted into an active war. Three weeks of heavy air strikes and ground fighting sparked months of media scrutiny, debate and criticism. Overnight, daily international headlines focused on disproportionality, rights to defend, and to exist.
At the time, I was a research intern for a counterterrorism think tank in Herzliya, about an hour north of Tel Aviv. I learned about “following the money” as a guiding principle when tracking terrorist activity. I sat 100 yards from Bibi at a conference as he warned that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would make 9/11 look like “a walk in a rose garden.”
Yet none of this helped me understand what was happening 50 miles away in Gaza.
Back then, Instagram and social media activism didn’t exist. It wouldn’t be until 2012 when celebrities and infographics would explain everything to us, during the Arab Spring. For weeks my inbox was flooded with emails from friends and family in the States, worried about the war. I replied I was fine; I was safe in Tel Aviv.
~~
“I’m an American but I live in Israel”
This was part of my daily script for four years. A canned response to the most commonly asked question when carrying an accent: where are you from? This is generally received warmly, with an invitation to dinner that Friday night if you have nowhere else to go.
Yet in the spring of 2009 I left Israel for a few weeks to travel in Australia, and found that the same script felt completely different. I learned what it’s like for an Israeli to go abroad after a recent war. I felt the crushing weight of an invisible burden that didn’t exist as an American living in Israel. I grew highly sensitive to my blended national identity and started scanning for reactions, subtle cues for how to proceed. A raised eyebrow, a tilted head, or a warm smile could signal an opportunity to connect or swiftly move on. I felt responsible for representing Israel to an international audience of backpackers, and was unsure why or how to stop feeling that way.
Hoping to find myself in an artist community, I booked three nights at a hostel in a surfer town on the easternmost tip of Australia called Byron Bay. It was a ten-minute walk to the beach, but I never made it off the property. Barefoot hippies wore colorful beanies, played ping pong and guitar, attended workshops on didgeridoos and held talent shows. They shared snacks like “Stoner’s Paradise”, a warm fudge brownie with vanilla bean ice cream served at the hostel’s café.
Arriving solo, I sat alone for dinner my first night until a booming voice with an Aussie accent announced, “Anyone wanna try kangaroo? I have extra!”
I heard myself say “Yes!” and gained instant access to a group of longer-term travelers, open to longer stories and deeper connections. My three night stay became a week and one day I scored an invitation to watch a movie with a few people on a baby blue VW microbus. This was the hostel’s version of a luxury suite and while small, it offered enough space for five travelers from different parts of the world to get high and create a new reality for an afternoon.
The air on that bus was heavy with wisdom from years of international exchange. Like a spiritual washing machine for those traveling between parts of their lives. The ceiling was adorned in handwritten messages by previous guests: dated initials, anatomical doodles, instructions on how to live a good life.
We were in our twenties: our Canadian host, two Germans, an Israeli and me. I imagined an unspoken bond with the Israeli and was more curious about the Germans, two brothers on a small couch of floor cushions, a few feet away.
I had never met any Germans besides our babysitter, an older woman named Heidi. When they learned I lived in Israel we discussed how the two countries are now friends, and how good it is to meet people in real life whom you only heard about through stories and media. Suddenly, I noticed their long limbs spread across the makeshift couch and realized they must be very tall. I saw they had chiseled jawlines, shaggy blond hair and sapphire eyes.
“Can I ask a question about Germany that I hope isn’t offensive?” I asked, adding a credential, “I studied anthropology so am curious about cultural differences.”
They nodded.
“Is the word Aryan used in modern Germany?” I nervously asked.
“You are not offending us,” they replied, matter-of-factly. “But no, it’s not.”
Just then, the Canadian chimed in to say, “We are not our countries.”
We fell silent, letting his words expand within and around ourselves.
As an American abroad, I was often asked what I thought about Bush and Obama. As an Israeli resident, I felt defensive about the conflict dominating headlines. But hearing that sentence, I became just a person in a purple beanie and green utility pants, representing no one but my own evolving self.
I felt the presence of the Israeli grow larger. He had been silent and I asked him a question I strangely can’t remember. It must have been about the recent war, or whether he met other Israelis while traveling. What I recall is his sharp response.
“Stop trying to psychoanalyze me.”
Somehow my face grew hot and the bus got cold at the same time. It was the only moment of tension after weeks of travel and dozens of interactions with people from all over the world. I crossed an invisible boundary I didn’t know was there.
“That wasn’t my intention,” I replied, and waited for an opportunity to step outside to get some fresh air and decided to go shower before dinner.
That evening, the others told me to not take it personally; he had snapped a couple of times earlier. He was traveling after his army service, as many Israelis take a year before starting their university studies. I wondered what he was doing a few months earlier, and realized he was navigating a different layer of complexity than I was in relation to Israel.
We were both unwilling representatives of a complicated country, each with our own personal stories, practical knowledge, and emotional attachments. Our common identity as people living in Israel during wartime did not translate into the automatic bond I had assumed outside the context of Israel.
We are not our countries.
~~
Takeaways:
Looking back on this incident, I view it as a blueprint for navigating encounters with people from areas of conflict, even if I think we’re on the same “side”.
We can’t resort to reducing someone’s entire identity to their national or cultural background. Instead, it’s better to remain curious and to listen without our projections fogging up the lens.
This is a helpful personal reminder for the current moment. Even within the renewed solidarity of the global Jewish community, there are nuanced perspectives and unexpected moments of tension that can be hard to detect, especially for those outside these communities.
It’s scary to share stories that touch on the conflict. I get nervous about sounding naïve, uninformed, biased, privileged, and other fun stuff like that. But this was one of many formative experiences I had in the four years I lived in Israel from 2008-2012. It put me on a path toward cross-cultural dialogue, nonviolent communication and identity-based conflict mediation. It’s why I pursued “communication” as a general career path, including a master’s degree. I am sharing these experiences as a way to process them in a new light, to illuminate the next steps on that path.
There’s too much to explain and unpack in one post; what it means to call myself “Israeli” in a legal and a personal sense, the expression “traveling while Israeli”, other applications of the phrase “we are not our countries”, and whether sharing this on Substack makes sense.
I’m curious what this sparks for you:
Have you ever felt reduced to your nationality or culture?
How did you navigate those interactions?
How does living in a country with a complex political history affect interactions with outsiders?