My husband and I have just returned to North America after four and two years (respectively) abroad, and have spent recent weeks visiting family and friends in various cities across the United States and Canada. Whenever we tell people we’ve been living in Israel, the most common reaction is, “Weren’t you guys scared?”
We were volunteering at the Baha’i World Centre in Haifa, which is staffed by approximately 800 individuals from over 80 countries around the world. While there, we became accustomed to popping our trunk upon entering a parking garage; opening our bags for inspection while out to dinner, a movie, or even a quick coffee; riding next to soldiers with machine guns on public trains; and submitting to thorough (yet always extremely courteous) questioning at airports. Frankly, I came to feel quite secure there.
Within days of landing in Silicon Valley, I walked into a popular coffee shop with my family and heard the news that a disgruntled engineer had just opened fire in a nearby building. We were flanked by empty office space and other debris of the burst dot.com bubble, and the Remax signs scattered upon lawns of the surrounding neighborhood seemed eerily reminiscent of the little red plastic flags I used to see along Kosovo roadsides where landmines had yet to be defused. A dramatic comparison perhaps, but the more recent news of the deaths at Walmart and Toys R Us certainly adds to the feeling that living with a false sense of security is far more scary than living in any particular location these days.
i do agree. it also didn’t take long at all for a real sense of security and safety to be engendered while living in Israel. And, I experienced the same sort of wonder upon my return to the States.
One of the most scary things is the ability of my nephew who was one and a half when I moved back to the States new how to use his mother’s iPhone, correctly. he could call up on the iPhone the latest download of Bunnytown that his dad had uploaded. And on a number of freakish occasions, I received a phone call from my sister when it indeed was my nephew, only to be able to listen; so very scary. And at one point, he called and left a message, 3 minute message, on my phone. So scary.
But, in all seriousness, I so feel the same way about the nature of and occurrences of violence here in the States juxtaposed that of Israel, and that false sense of security.
thanks for calling us out on our false sense of security… and furthermore, how do we define safety? is it as simple as physical security? and what effect might a sense of physical security have on our desire to criticize our ideologies? there’s a lot to be lost down the line if we define safety as immediate physical and ideological stability.