TOWERVIEW
SEPTEMBER 2014 | VOL. 16 | ISSUE 2
INTO THE FRAY
TWO STUDENTS RECOUNT THEIR SUMMERS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
through
FEB 22 Joan Miró, Femme, oiseau, étoile (Homenatge a Pablo Picasso) (Woman, Bird and Star [Homage to Pablo Picasso]) (detail), 1966/1973. Oil on canvas, 96 7⁄16 x 66 15⁄16 inches (245 x 170 cm). Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain. © Successió Miró / Arists Rights Society (ARS), New York, New York / ADAGP, Paris, France.
Miró: The Experience of Seeing is organized by the Seattle Art Museum and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
nasher.duke.edu/miro
Admission is free for all Duke students.
SEPT 14
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CONTENTS
SEPTEMBER 2014 - VOL. 16 - ISSUE 2
CONTENTS TOWERVIEW STAFF
TOM VOSBURGH
YIYUN ZHU
05
CHEAP EATS
06
THAT TIME I...
09
Where to find the most cost-friendly meals in Durham.
Our resident daredevil paraglides in the Swiss Alps.
EMPLOYMENT BENEFITS Duke’s Career Center shifts its focus towards students pursuing the arts.
STEVEN DAVIDSON
ELISSA LEVINE
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
BECKY RICHARDS
SID GOPINATH
14
AN AMERICAN JEW IN PALESTINE
21
THIS ISRAEL LIFE
26
PHOTO ESSAY
27 30
Bearing witness to an unfolding humanitarian crisis.
The Israel the American media never saw.
A look at Duke’s music scene.
SARAH’S STORY Inside Duke junior Sarah Stanczyk’s 6-month battle with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
THE FINAL EXAM Two Duke students who are literally rocket scientists.
ON THE COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ALAN DIPPY Step 1: How do we sum up the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in one image? Step 2: That’s only one of the most difficult questions you could ask. Step 3: Contrasting images? Star of David and a crescent moon? Step 4: Still sounds tough...maybe an illustration works. Step 5: Opens first illustration mockup. Step 6: “Woah.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE
letter
TOWERVIEW ’
THE CHRONICLE S NEWS AND CULTURE MAGAZINE
EDITORS-IN-CHIEF DANIEL CARP AND DANIELLE MUOIO
PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR CREATIVE DIRECTOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR EXECUTIVE EDITOR
ELYSIA SU ELIZA STRONG HAILEY CUNNINGHAM BECKY RICHARDS CARLEIGH STIEHM
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS STEVEN DAVIDSON, SID GOPINATH, ELISSA LEVINE, BEKCY RICHARDS, TOM VOSBURGH, YIYUN ZHU
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS ANTHONY ALVERNAZ , IZZI CLARK , STEVEN DAVIDSON , DARBI GRIFFITH , JESÚS HIDALGO , ELISSA LEVINE , YUYI LI , EMMA LOEWE , DANIELLE MUOIO , BRIANNA SIRACUSE , ELYSIA SU , VICTOR YE
CONTRIBUTING STAFF HAILEY CUNNINGHAM, CARLEIGH STIEHM
GENERAL MANAGER ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CREATIVE DIRECTOR OPERATIONS MANAGER DIGITAL SALES MANAGER
CHRISSY BECK REBECCA DICKENSON BARBARA STARBUCK MARY WEAVER MEGAN MCGINITY
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Towerview is a subsidiary of The Chronicle and is published by the Duke Student Publishing Company, Inc., a non-profit corporation independent of Duke University. The opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of Duke University, its students, faculty, staff, administration or trustees. Columns, letters and cartoons represent the views of the authors. To reach The Chronicle’s editorial office at 301 Flowers Building, call (919) 684-2663 or fax (919) 684-4696. To reach The Chronicle’s business office at 103 West Union Building, call (919) 684-3811. To reach The Chronicle’s advertising office at 2022 Campus Drive, call (919) 684-3811 or fax (919) 684-8295. Contact the advertising office for information on subscriptions. Visit The Chronicle and Towerview online at dukechronicle.com ©2014 The Chronicle, Box 90858, Durham, N.C. 27708. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the prior, written permission of the business office. Each individual is entitled to one free copy.
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TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
from the editors
Dear readers, When we first arrive at Duke—clad with lanyards and outfit choices we later regret— the administration makes a huge effort to ease us into our new environment. FAC chats and carnivals are scheduled so we begin to feel at home in our prison-cell sized dorm rooms (shout out to Blackwell, y’all), and after a few days of coddling, President Richard Brodhead boldly announces it is time for our parents to leave and our college experience to officially begin. We like to think Duke does a similar thing with its seniors, though it is not nearly as prominently displayed. Duke (finally) allows its seniors to move off campus after three years in mediocre housing (sorry Joe Gonzalez), slowly disconnecting us from the Gothic Wonderland we linked our identities to for the past three years. With Dan living in a house of seven guys and Danielle enjoying apartment life with two roommates (one of whom designed this awesome magazine) we usually only trek to campus for the occasional class. Living off campus allows us to relish having our own personal space, hang out with our friends in Durham and slowly cross the bridge from student life to living as an adult. Some parts of becoming a senior are like becoming a freshman all over again. Outside of West campus, you find yourself reconnecting with friends you crossed paths with less often in Duke’s rigid social structure. It becomes startlingly easier to waste time. And for the first time in a while, the answer to not having anything to do becomes, “I guess I’ll just go out with my friends and worry about my priorities later.” But then there’s the other half of transitioning into your last year at Duke. College student problems dissipate into real-world problems. Rent has to get paid. Bills need to go out on time. Job recruiting season ushers in stacks upon stacks of applications, cover letters, info sessions and interviews. It’s easy to lose yourself in that chaos. It’s easy to focus so much on the future that you forget to enjoy the present—the last of the four best years of our lives. In many ways, what truly keeps us linked to Duke is 301 Flowers, where we assembled this magazine while listening to ’90s music and eating semi-stale buffalo-flavored pretzels. The Chronicle office, despite holding some bitter memories, has been a second home since we picked up our first stories as bright-eyed freshmen who considered deadlines a little more thoughtfully. Being in 301 allows you to forget how old you are. It provides a sense of normalcy that lets you rewind in your mind to a time before all the job apps and bills and forget about the stacks of reading and homework we’re inevitably ignoring. There’s a stillness to it. It’s a sense of calm that we need, now more than ever. Even when we’re forced to trek in from our homes off campus, the opportunity to spend a few nights a month up here provides us with the most valuable gift we can think of—the chance to relive some of our best Duke memories and make some more while we still can.
DANIEL CARP
DANIELLE MUOIO
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THAT TIME I...
STORY AND PHOTOS BY TOM VOSBURGH
PARAGLIDED IN THE SWISS ALPS
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Every year, about half of the junior class packs up their bags to study outside the walls of the Gothic Wonderland. But every Duke students knows going abroad is about more than continuing their studies in an alternate setting— a portion of the allure to leave comes from the knowledge that four months abroad means endless possibilities for adventure. Junior Tom Vosburgh will be using his time abroad to push himself outside of his comfort zone, and he’ll be writing about it here in Towerview.
I
NTERLAKEN, Switzerland—Ignoring a forecast of low-speed winds and lowaltitude clouds, I decided to go paragliding one chilly August morning. I had successfully slouched through the country for three days despite my limited knowledge of German, so in my mind the inevitable next step was to fling myself off a mountaintop strapped to a stranger. Thus, with much help from the rental car’s Irish-accented navigation system, we made our way to Interlaken, a town known for its posh hotels and hiking trails. Weather conditions had not improved. After parking just off the main road, I waded my way through a throng of selfie stick-and designer suitcase-toting Asian tourists towards the meeting point, a place called “Restaurant Hooters,” which I incorrectly assumed to be a misspelling of “Hörers”—German for “listeners”. I was wrong and soon found myself bashfully standing
“
Always one to have some sort of moral support when undertaking something new, I gulped and took a deep breath. The altitude change was getting to me. We exited the van, and I met my pilot, a 40-something, grey-haired Swiss man named Dany. He knew enough English to discuss the unseasonable weather and resilient beauty of the Alps with me during the short trek to the takeoff site but not enough to understand my joke about the presence of a Hooters in a high-class resort town. Fortunately, however, he did see the humor in the restaurant logo being emblazoned in massive block letters on one of the wings the group was to use. Realizing we had run out of discussion topics and now knew each other well enough that I trusted him not to pilot us into the face of a cliff, Dany proceeded to set up the wing while I put on my helmet and gazed at the still-snowcapped Alps just barely visible over the trees that surrounded three sides of the takeoff site. In a few moments I was going to get a much better view of them. The first glider took off, and Dany shepherded me into the flight harness—I was now strapped against him in a spooning position—and briefed me on what was to come next. “Basically just run,” he said. And so we did. After five steps, I began to feel the wing hit air resistance. The hill we were sprinting down became steeper, and we neared a decaying wooden barn. Suddenly, the wing caught the wind and we were aloft, flying much more quickly than I
WE WERE AT THE MERCY OF OUR EQUIPMENT AND THE WEATHER, AND SOMETHING ABOUT FLYING WITHOUT THE REDUNDANCIES OF MODERN AIRCRAFT WAS EXHILARATING.”
in front of America’s best-known breastaurant waiting for a mysterious white van to whisk me into the Alps. As the van whipped around the hairpin turns that took us up the mountain, I examined my fellow paragliders. Aside from a Bay Area techie who probably had a Google Glass hidden in his windbreaker pocket, I was the only one flying solo; the rest were couples, there to support each other as they descended some 800 meters from a nondescript ridge to Interlaken’s central park.
had expected. Instead of gliding peacefully we were buffeted by air currents. My raincoat, more than sufficient for withstanding the crappy weather below me, suddenly felt flimsy. My feet dangled beneath me and the harness rode a little too far up my thighs, but I was too busy looking down at the rapidly shrinking treetops to feel much discomfort. While I’ve taken flight in everything from Boeing 747s to Cessna single-engines, paragliding was like nothing I’d ever be-
fore experienced. No fuselage limited my field of vision to a single tiny window, and no flight attendant served complimentary wine once we reached cruising altitude half a mile above the ground. We were at the mercy of our equipment and the weather, and something about flying without the redundancies of modern aircraft was exhilarating. Exhaling for the first time in nearly half a minute, I allowed the adrenaline rush to hit me and let go of the ropes that held me to the wing. No thermals—columns of rising air that whisk gliders upwards and lengthen their flight—were in the area that day, so our descent began rather quickly. We crossed over a ridge, and all of Interlaken was spread before us. The two lakes for which the town is named were a brilliant shade of turquoise, and the people walking the streets were just barely visible, their raincoats matching the color of the water-darkened streets. As we neared the central park in which we were to land, the glider tipped forwards and we headed straight down. I spread my arms like a skydiver in a misguided attempt to slow our descent, but it did nothing other than embarrass me; Dany had decided to make up for the lack of wind by forcing the glider down as quickly as possible, creating the sensation one experiences onboard a roller coaster. After some five seconds of what I thought was a freefall we leveled off, as did my heart rate. “How was that for an adrenaline rush?” Dany asked. I mumbled something in response, still recovering from the shock. Slowly, the selfie stick-toting Asian tourists came into view and I braced myself for the landing. “It’s easy,” Dany told me. “Start running when you hit the ground then slow down.” It was easier said than done. Upon impact with the ground I took two steps and plopped my rear onto the ground, causing the pilot to trip over me and push my face into the dirt. A brief struggle in which I tried to sit up and he attempted to step backwards and bring the wing onto the ground ensued. Thankfully, no judgmental Swiss people were around to witness our embarrassment, so I allowed myself to enjoy the sensation of being back on solid ground as Dany unstrapped us from the wing. I had enjoyed my time as a bird, but it felt right to be back in the realm of the flightless. TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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NEWS
EMPLOYMENT BENEFITS
STORY BY YIYUN ZHU PHOTOS BY ANTHONY ALVERNAZ
Career Center shifts focus to target students pursuing the arts
D
uke may not be known as a campus for the arts, but with several programs dedicated to dance, music, theater and writing, a niche section of undergraduates hope to enter creative industries following graduation. Those looking for assistance in doing so, however, have not typically found the Career Center to be a helpful resource. “They really don’t have too many resources available for people who want to pursue the arts,” said Drew Klingner, who graduated as a theater studies major this year and is now working at the Roundabout Theater Company on Broadway. Cameron Thompkins, a Trinity ’13 graduate who majored in music, echoed a similar sentiment. He noted that the problem arises due to a lack of creative artsfocused personnel in the Career Center. Additionally, advisors are not familiar with music-specialized knowledge. “In terms of job placement, there wasn’t a whole lot
they could advise on entering this part of the creative industry and looking for such a niche job,” he said. Bill Wright-Swadel, the Fannie Mitchell Executive Director of the Career Center, said the Career Center has had two, fulltime counselor for the arts in the past, but declined to disclose their names and why they left Duke. Ross Wade was hired as the new career counselor for the arts over the summer and speculates that a lack of marketing may have prevented students from using the previous counselors as a resource. Wright-Swadel said that the Center works with alumni in order to assist students interested in creative fields. He countered the idea that the Career Center is only designed to help students interested in financial fields, noting that career fairs typically sponsor investment banks and consulting fields because they seek out students, whereas artsrelated industries do not typically recruit on-the-ground. “Lots of activities in a certain area make you think that everything that happens somewhere centers around that. So every-
body else thinks that Duke is a basketball school because we get so much recognition,” he said. “The same thing happens in the Career Center around things like investment banking and consulting because they are very aggressive recruiters.” He added that the Career Center facilitates this type of financial recruitment because there is a boom of interest by the student body in these fields. “All we are doing is allowing that to happen because there are a lot of students here who are interested in those fields,” he said. “People in the arts don’t recruit that way. That’s not how you get jobs.” Molly Superfine, a Trinity ’13 graduate with a double major in art history and Spanish, noted that the Career Center was previously only equipped to help students interested in arts education. “I was told there weren’t any relevant resources they had for me,” she said. “I was asked if I was sure I wanted to pursue museum work, and more specifically curatorial and academic arts work, as opposed
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ross wade to other non-profit or arts education work, as they could have provided more assistance with that.” She ended up researching museums she was interested in on her own and applied without guidance from the Career Center. Wade said he wants more students interested in arts-related professions to feel comfortable using the Career Center as a resource. Prior to joining Duke, Wade worked in documentary, digital media and strategic communications. “I am here for the population,” he said. “We want them to know that we are here for them, that we kick butt, and that the Career Center is not just all about management and consulting.” Wade noted that when he graduated from East Carolina University in 1998, he didn’t know what he was going to do with his life and worked at different record stores and coffee shops in Chicago and New York. Eventually he entered career services because he wanted to work with young people
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and share his passion in arts and media. Since he started his job this year, however, only one student interested in artsrelated careers came to him for advice. “People probably just don’t know I am here yet,” he said. In collaboration with Amy Unell, the Alumna in Residence at the Career Center who serves as the liaison to create arts entrepreneurship across the University, Wade fills the role of helping students build a team of support and navigate their paths in pursuit of their artistic passions. Unell, Trinity ’03, worked as a producer for NBC’s “Today Show” for six years and was hired last year to promote initiatives in all facets of arts education. She currently works across several different areas including the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts, the Office of Students Affairs, the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative and the Duke in Silicon Valley program. “I help connect the dots, to figure out how students can be engaged around the arts, to help further their dreams and ambitions,” Unell said.
She and Wade meet with students pursuing artistic careers one-on-one, assisting them in the process of figuring out their biggest interests and navigating their career paths. Unell said she is aware of the asymmetry of information when it comes to opportunities available to students versus the awareness of these resources. As part of their marketing efforts, they have made flyers where scheduled events in arts and media are listed to inform students of all networking opportunities. “This is exactly the answer to students who say that they go to the career fair and don’t find anything for them since a lot of companies at the fair are business-based and technology-based,” Unell said. “We are handing these flyers out at the career fair to say, ‘Guess what, these are all the dates that you can check out.’ It is an example of us saying, ‘Hey, we are here.’” Wade is also working on building a webpage that lists the schedule of upcoming events related to arts, entertainment and media, as well as a resources page with links
to blog posts by arts alumni and current students. He and Unell are also planning a spring reunion event, called the Night with Industry, which will be equivalent to the DEMAN weekend in the Fall where alumni are invited back to campus and talk about their industry. “We want juniors coming back from studying abroad who have missed DEMAN in the Fall to also have the chance to connect with these amazing alumni and learn more about their fields,” Unell added. Wright-Swadel said the Center sends teams of people to places like Los Angeles and New York City where they spend days visiting individual alumni and organizations. The team brings people back to campus regularly, which is a part of the expert-in-residence program, where notable figures in the creative industry—such as the producer of The Hunger Games—are invited to campus to chat about their careers. “One of the key things is getting students to recognize that arts are indeed vibrant, active, intelligent, exciting and places where students can build careers,”
Wright-Swadel said, adding that the Center is building relationships constantly. “Imagine the number of people we have talked to so that we could get those people to come back and share their experiences.” Courtney Liu, who graduated in 2013 with a major in psychology but remains interested in dance, has been invited to blog about her experience as a freelance dancer, teacher and choreographer in New York City. She noted that the Career Center has played an important role in helping her make transitions and pursue a career in dance. Wright-Swadel added that the role of the Career Center is to help the institution build a community and help individuals build a sub-community that consists of faculty, career counselors, alums and peers. “We are now connective tissues,” he said. “What we are really trying to do is to create an environment where students see their imagination as possible, and then there are people who can teach them how to go from where they are to where they want to be.”
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MY SIDE OF THE WALL
FIRSTHAND PERSPECTIVES FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
an american jew in STORY AND PHOTOS BY STEVEN DAVIDSON
H
EBRON, Palestine—I recall the sermons in my religious services growing up. During the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, there were always calls for peace and prayers for Israel. A country symbolizing the triumphant conclusion to centuries of persecution, Israel was the home to my people—the Jews. And they had waited so long to return. It wasn’t until this summer in which I had the honor of doing so. Although I began my trip under the normal auspices of going on Birthright, my trip took me far from the comforts of Israel, into a land where few Jews go—Palestine. Preparing to leave from Tel Aviv, I was nervous for the two months ahead. I had just finished participating in the Birthright program. After listening to the Israeli narrative of this land for two weeks, I was ready to see the other side that had been kept from me and other Jews for so long. Mentions of the West Bank were sparse during Birthright, and when it was discussed, the narrative seemed
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palestine
incomplete. I had loved my connection with the Land of Israel—the land of my origins. However, I was disturbed by the way people connected the Land of Israel with the State of Israel—the actions and policies of the current government—without true inner contemplation. Political doctrine was presented as fact. Now I was going to the black part of the map. I craved to see Palestine with my own eyes, but knew so little about the land. Before I went to teach English to Palestinians and work for an Nongovernmental organization in Hebron, I tried to research the Palestinian culture. But Google searches only yielded news clippings of terrorist attacks and violent clashes. All I had heard from Israelis about Palestinians was their supposed poor taste in clothing. As I crossed the Green Line to enter the West Bank, life in Palestine was a complete and anxious unknown. The situation I discovered while living in Hebron in the West Bank for more than two months was shocking. Living there during
times of peace (relatively speaking), a kidnapping and ensuing operation and ultimately war, I witnessed all the stages of the occupation. I witnessed inhumane horrors at the hands of what I had been told for so long was a benevolent government. They were horrors I had not anticipated to be so blatant in their nature and so extensive in their practice. Yet, the comforting light at the end of my journey was to have the opportunity to meet the people there who—in spite of their traumatic lives—only showed me love and hospitality. There I was, on the other side of one of the biggest conflicts in world history, and all these people showed me was kindness. There was the husband and wife who, after feeding me to no end (an all-too-common occurrence), sent me on my way with a bag of peaches. The father, peering around the room, handed me an energy drink, desperate to give me anything. In one afternoon alone, four separate people on the street invited me to dinner that night. There was the taxi driver who took it upon himself to leave his shift
to show me around the Old City and reveal all the secrets his town had to offer, and the restaurateur who took me in as I sought to break fast during Ramadan. As I finished the three-course Iftar, I asked him how much it would cost. He looked at me and replied, “No, Islam,” as he pointed to the sky. These were people who often worked upward of 11 or 12 hours in a day to make not much money at all, and yet, here they were paying for my drinks, treating me to dinner and doing everything they can to make me feel welcome. So how did a Jew from New York survive in a place in which the Anti-Defamation League found 93 percent of the population to be anti-Semitic? Aside from a group of trusted people, everyone in the West Bank thought I was Christian. I was racked with guilt of lying to people who had been so kind to me, yet I knew that if the wrong person had found out my background, there could be grave repercussions. Ultimately, my identity would not have made a difference with most people. In conversations I had, people repeatedly stated to me that they were not anti-Semitic—they were only anti-Zionist. They emphasized all the two Abrahamic religions shared, and they always mentioned the American Jews who voiced opposition to Israeli occupation. The picture I was viewing was vastly different than the one that had been painted for me when I was younger. I realized that statistics like the ADL’s was the result of equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Even when I encountered antiSemitism, which I will never condone, I knew
it was the product of experiences that span far beyond my 21 years on this earth. Their fleeting interactions with Jews have often ended staring down the barrel of a gun. Wars do not happen without a systematic dehumanization of your enemy. In Palestine, this dehumanization is the same in peacetime as it is in the throws of battle. The Palestinians live under military rule. Israel Defense Forces soldiers can effectively do as they please. Even places Palestinians are technically allowed to go would sometimes be off-limits. I listened as my friend told me how his ability to go to the Dead Sea, inside the West Bank, was dictated by whether a soldier along the way decided to turn him back or not. And if my friend asserted his right to go? “I might be shot.” Whoever by name controlled areas of the West Bank, it was ultimately Israel that had the overriding power. Checkpoints were everywhere—soldiers were as common as olive trees. Before I arrived, there had been a video of an identified soldier shooting and killing an unarmed girl, yet nothing happened. There is virtually no international media found in the West Bank. Israel largely keeps the foreign press out and demands self-censorship. Most international reports on the West Bank are in fact reported from Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. To read the news unfolding in front of me distorted by the media at home only affirmed that I needed to share what I experienced. Censorship is one of Israel’s greatest weapons—the reality does not match the story given to the public. A towering slab of concrete divides Israel and Palestine. The wall’s construction
destroyed dozens of villages, has caused an endless economic depression and imprinted permanent psychological damage to the Palestinian people. Every time I mentioned going to Tel Aviv, guilt would seep through as people lamented their desire to just one day be able to see the ocean. It pained me as I’d pass Jerusalem from the other side of the wall and those around me would look on at the Dome of the Rock in the distance, wishing to one day pray there. It was always an awkward topic to mention my travels in Israel, having visited all these places as a foreigner. These places were a part of their childhood, yet now they could never experience what I did with such ease. The wall penetrated people’s minds and livelihood in so many ways, even in life-or-death situations. There was a boy who fell ill and needed immediate medical attention. His family drove to the wall to go to the hospital in Jerusalem. In spite of his critical condition, soldiers denied permission for him to go. He died at the wall. These stories are far from uncommon. Visiting the wall was intensely emotional. In Bethlehem, people write down their experiences and tape them to the wall. The stories stretch for miles. Street art on the wall calls for freedom and justice, a world where they “build bridges, not walls.” Tears flowed down my face in a gentle stream. I came upon an inscription: “Judaism ≠ Zionism,” as a Crescent Moon and Star of David were drawn side-by-side. I collapsed to my knees. The messages in front of me were cries of desperation, of humanity. And yet, only on this side of the wall could these cries be heard. Even in the West Bank, Palestinians struggle to move around. Checkpoints arbitrarily turn people back or detain them for hours on end, despite international law limiting detention without reason to 20 minutes. People are beaten and humiliated at these checkpoints. These are not defensive measures. They occur unprovoked and upon innocent bystanders. With checkpoints and limited roads available to the Palestinians, a 60-mile trip from Hebron to Jenin can take six hours. Foreign aid workers are hardly welcome in the West Bank. The friends I had were forced to lie under the pretenses of their stays in Israel or face being turned away. Each time they leave, they fear they won’t be allowed back in. Suspicion of going to the West Bank leads to detention in the airport or on the border for hours, with the very possible result of being turned away. I knew an American lawyer who was stopped at Ben Gurion Airport. They
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demanded to look through her computer. Knowing her rights, she said no. They told her they would take her computer and send it back to her. When it was sent back, there was a bullet hole through it. Members of Christian Peacemaker Teams—a human rights organization with funding from the United Nations—have had their credentials turned down at the border. Even when they get into the West Bank, there are risks. They have been arrested by the IDF for simply escorting Palestinian children to school to prevent violence from settlers and soldiers alike. I cannot count the amount of times I witnessed and learned things in which I’d fall silent. I asked myself, ‘Why? What is the reason?’ The answer always was: there was no reason. I’ve witnessed what the government and thus media declare to be security measures. They’re not security measures. They’re oppression. The prisoners Palestinians refer to as “the kidnapped” are those who are under Israeli administrative detention. Administrative detention was a law carried over and expanded from the times of the British Mandate. It allows Israel to throw anyone in prison—in use, Palestinians—for up to six months without charges or due process. They simply renew the sentence every six months, making imprisonment indefinite. These cases are nonviolent in nature and are largely used as a measure to suppress political activism in the West Bank. The first night I was in Hebron, I met a man who was in administrative detention for five years. He was silenced after being politically active on his college campus against the occupation. There were others I had met who had been imprisoned under similar terms. None of them committed any wrongful crimes. I had tea in the home of another man who had been imprisoned under administrative detention for four years. Hamas had been helping to pay for his college tuition, so he was thrown in jail. What people don’t realize about support for Hamas in the West Bank is that it does not come out of a desire to kill all Jews. In times of relative calm, most support actually comes from Hamas’s social welfare programs, such as helping kids pay for school, running soup kitchens and organizing community activities such as soccer leagues. This dynamic changed as the war in Gaza began. When the kidnapping of the three Israeli boys occurred nearby in Hebron, no one was celebrating. Everyone’s reaction to the news was that of fear. My American friends began
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Every night, I would toss in bed, wondering when the world would wake up and realize—this wasn’t a political issue in the West Bank.
It was a humanitari
posting links originally from the IDF showing photos of Palestinians on social media smiling as they held up three fingers to celebrate the kidnapping. However, the reality was that these photos had been taken a year before, when Palestinian Mohammad Assaf, contestant number three, was vying for votes on Arab Idol. When the boys were eventually found dead, the IDF resurfaced again with these false claims, which many Westerners came to believe. I could not believe the violent and ignorant cries against these people I had come to love. Throughout the next two weeks of Operation Brothers Keeper, I saw human rights violations I could not believe were happening right in front of my eyes. I will corroborate what many reports say that Israel knew all along that the boys were dead. From the very first day of the operation, the field next to the hill I lived on in Halhul (just outside Hebron) had dozens of soldiers scouring the field. The field turned out to be where the bodies were later found. Israeli authorities have acknowledged Hamas’ leadership had nothing to do
with the kidnapping. It was clear to all in the West Bank that the operation was collective punishment and an excuse to disrupt the recent unity deal with Hamas and Fatah. Over the course of those two weeks, almost everyone in Hebron I know had their house raided. I don’t understand how the final figure reported was just a couple thousand homes and businesses. There was no reasoning for choosing the houses they stormed. It was simply: you’re Palestinian, so you’re a suspect. These raids were extreme, invasive and inhumane. My host family was a well-todo family—my father was a doctor, and my siblings were all educated professionals. Yet, when they stormed my home, they broke my door and stole my mom’s jewelry. Property damage and theft was common during these raids. I’d watch soldiers go neighborhood by neighborhood. My friend told me of an innocent family he knew that was detained in one room in their house for 36 hours without food or water. One woman needed her medication, but was denied access by soldiers. She was hos-
ian crisis.”
pitalized afterwards. Hebron was on lockdown. No one from Hebron was allowed to leave the city for any purpose. Whether for business, flights—it didn’t matter. Millions of Palestinian dollars and experiences were lost. The area suffered tremendously. Soldiers were everywhere, roaming the streets and storming into local businesses and houses. Over the course of the operation, Palestinians were killed, injured and arrested. The night the bodies were found, I was walking back from the city to my house. I wondered why so many soldiers were there. After all, they had already been there for two weeks. Later that night, I needed to go back into the city to meet with a friend. I was warned not to go, as the soldiers were angry and had orders to shoot people on sight. I ignored these warnings. As I approached the scene from 50 feet away, all the soldiers began screaming and pointing their guns at me. I had four red lasers from their guns pointed at my head. I screamed I was American, and they told me
to go away. As I was walking home, I could hear gunshots and grenades. I wanted to see what was happening. I walked across my hill and went on the roof of an abandoned building that overlooked the scene on the street. Within a minute, a soldier saw me, turned, and pointed his gun, red laser at my head. I ducked down immediately and ran away. Had I not run, I likely would have been shot. Israelis later told me that military protocol in such situations call for multiple warning shots before shooting at a person. However, I had known Hebronites who had family members killed in the very same situation without warning. Protocol and actions seemed to differ. A couple of days later was July 4. As my mouth salivated at the thoughts of barbecue back home, I walked through the bombed and destroyed home of a family nearby. It was the family of one of the suspects in the kidnapping. The house was barely standing. Over the past two weeks, the IDF had come to their home to systematically destroy
it. They destroyed all the appliances in the house. The walls were blackened from the bombs that were detonated inside. The side of the house had been blown out and the walls looked as though they were moments away from collapsing. The family’s son, the suspect, had run away from home a year before and had had no contact with his family since. Yet the IDF decided nevertheless to come in to destroy everything the family had built up for so long. To look into their eyes was to see confusion, despair and hopelessness. They were good people. It was a microcosm of the collective punishment the people I had lived with were going through. My stomach churned as I left their place. My body felt faint looking into the frail father’s eyes. His innocent eyes burned my own with the backdrop of the destroyed house behind him. I was able to hold off until I was home before crying. When the war in Gaza commenced, things changed once again. Living near a checkpoint,
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there were clashes outside my house nearly every night. It didn’t take me too long to learn not to go to the clashes. Early on, I went to the one outside my house. It began with boys burning tires on the street and chanting calls for Mohammad Abu Khdeir, the Palestinian boy kidnapped, mutilated and killed in Jerusalem. Tear gas was then launched in our direction. With every canister that landed, people rushed to pick it up and throw it away before it did its damage. In spite of the devastating effects of a weapon banned by the Geneva Conventions for warfare, people would remain. After rocks were thrown—few, if any, would actually hit the soldiers—the soldiers began shooting. The one time I was stupid as to try to take a photo of the proceedings, a bullet whizzed right past me. There was no one else near me. They had seemingly targeted me for having a camera. I had the terrifying experience of having people running away by my side get shot. Some were rubber bullets, but they were for the most part live bullets, especially where I was. I have witnessed soldiers aim at bystanders. As the clashes continued throughout the weeks, Hebron transformed into a battlefield. With black spots dotting the street, Palestinians hid behind scraps of metal with shouts organizing the boys armed with small rocks as they dodged and ran from bullets. Over this time, many Palestinians were killed, and many more were injured. At one protest, a settler drove by and began shooting at the crowd. Settlers are Israeli citizens who live in areas throughout the West Bank that are subsidized by the Israeli government. There are 600 settlers living in Hebron, but the Israeli military controls 20 percent of the city for them. The United Nations uphold that settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention. The settlers consume a disproportionate amount of the region’s resources—40 percent of the West Bank is devoted to Israeli infrastructure. In the settlements, I’d see grass for the first time in weeks, and lush gardens supported with sprinklers. It was a slap in the face to the Palestinians who face constant water shortages, yet have their water tanks shot by IDF soldiers at night. Many of the problems arose after 1994, when a settler, Baruch Goldstein, opened fire on the crowd of Muslims praying at Ibrahimi Mosque—where Abraham and his descendants were purportedly buried—killing 30 Muslims and injuring 100 others. As a result of this, Israel decided to impose further restrictions and prevent any Palestinians from entering Al-Shuhada Street. Al-Shuhada Street
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was the central hub for commercial activity in Hebron 20 years ago. Now, it is empty, as only settlers are allowed. As Palestinians cannot drive or even walk through parts of the old city, in order to reach their homes, they often are forced to climb through windows and over rooftops. Walking for the first time through AlShuhada Street was the most chilling experience of my life. As I reached the checkpoint and handed the soldier my passport, I came upon a ghost town. In this huge area, the shops were welded shut and the street was completely empty. As someone from New York, seeing a once-commercial hub completely empty—with the shops and houses boarded up as you faintly hear the echoes of the city nearby—was downright creepy, frightening even. Propaganda signs from settlers lined the walls slandering the “Arabs” and recalling the “liberation” of Hebron in 1967. A sign proclaimed, “There was never a Palestine and there will never be a Palestine!” Along this large area, I saw one settler riding his bike alone. As I walked around this giant expanse for the small amount of settlers, there was only one thought that reverberated in my mind: Lebensraum. This was how it would have looked like if the Nazis had succeeded, I thought, if they had attained the living space they had wanted. As a Jew, I began to cry. The pain and suffering that had endured so these settlers could take over Palestinian homes and land, it all hit me with such force. I was walking through an Israeli-mandated ghost town. With soldiers patrolling the empty streets, it was insane to think this was once the commercial hub of the West Bank. The experience will haunt me forever. The settlers are ideological extremists whose desire to cleanse the old city of Palestinians, supported by the soldiers, has no limits. There was one Palestinian man who was offered money by settlers to leave his home,
which he refused. They proceeded to assault him, vandalize his home, and put a poisonous snake in his house. They later threw acid at his child’s face. I asked why the Palestinians didn’t go to the soldiers. The reply I got was a snort—“they’d only laugh.” I met a family who lived across from settlers in the old city of Hebron. They tried making fixes to their roof. For this act, the soldiers expelled them from their home. Any Palestinian home within 100 meters of a settlement is not allowed to make any repairs to their home of any kind. If they are found doing so, they are forced to leave. Thus, Palestinians are either faced with a slow, humiliating expulsion, or, a quick one. The homes are subsequently taken over by settlers. This is one of many tactics to expand the settlements. Homes have also been taken over in order to serve as Israeli military outposts, and unfounded claims have been made for homes to have ties to medieval or biblical Jewish figures, which is grounds for Palestinian expulsion. The violence I witnessed during my time shocked me, yet what shocked me further was how desensitized everyone around me was to it. The first time I witnessed violence, I was with my host brother and his friends. An unarmed man had been shot three times by a soldier nearby. We went to the scene as the ambulance took him away. After two minutes, everything was back to normal for everyone else. A man had been shot, and it was business as usual. As I remained solemn, those around me went back to joking around, living their life. After a moment or two, it was so casual to them. In general, the dark humor present throughout the conflict was a coping mechanism to help people live their lives. What was normal to them was unheard of to me. It was surreal how they were used to their friends being shot. And this is what they grow up in, I thought. To understand the psyche of Palestinians is to understand people who have been
treated inhumanely their entire lives. This was most important in experiencing the war while in Hebron. While minimal beforehand, support for Hamas grew tremendously during the war. This was something that I had great difficulty grappling with. I was a pacifist living in a world where all sides were resorting to violence. No actions were being taken that would lead to peace. Hamas propaganda videos aired on televisions via al-Aqsa station. In the nationalistic fervor on both sides, there was no capacity for self-reflection and criticism. I recall a conversation I had with my host brother about this. I confronted him on his support for Hamas during the war. I told him that even though Israel was killing scores of innocent people and what they were doing was horrible, two wrongs don’t make a right. I insisted that Hamas, by sending rockets to Israel without discrimination—no matter how unsuccessful they were—was committing acts of terrorism. He looked at me with his sad eyes, and replied, “Steven, I have grown up in a world in which I can sleep through bombs in my neighborhood, gunshots in my backyard. In my 30 years living, I have never been treated as a human being. Israel does not treat me as a human being. The international community does not treat me as a human being. No one has ever stood up for me. My dignity has been taken away, my humanity does not exist. This is the first time anyone—anyone—has ever stood up for me in any way. I just want to feel like a human in some way. I want peace, Steven. I don’t want anyone killed. But what is there for us to do? Every peace agreement we have, we only suffer more. We lose our land and our dignity. I just can’t take being treated like an animal any more.” He spoke with desperation in his voice. I knew that his conclusions were wrong
and would only hurt the Palestinian cause. The pacifist inside me screamed in pain. Yet, knowing what had driven this man to believe this—years of suffering and inhumanity—that is what made me truly realize the utterly sick, perverse ways of the system. It reminded me how Nelson Mandela, a symbol of liberation, carried out terrorist acts with the African National Congress in South Africa during apartheid, desperate for avenues to freedom. To see such wonderful people feeling obliged to support heinous acts was so sickening. Yet, I knew it was the inevitable result of brutal regime. History had predicted this. Before my visit, I was never an active voice in the issue. I felt the issue revolved around impassioned arguments and biased beliefs. After seeing what I’ve seen and knowing the truth on the ground, I knew the conversation had to be shifted from debate to understanding the situation. People would argue with my experiences. For people to deny the truth as mere political argument was demoralizing. I felt helpless. Every night, I would toss in bed, wondering when the world would wake up and realize—this wasn’t a political issue in the West Bank. It was a humanitarian crisis. Arguing with those who were ignorant of the truth yet so sure of what they believed was maddening. When does the journey for truth begin and the quest for self-validation end? My faith in humanity was shaken, but I would not let it be destroyed. I understand the side of the Israelis. I had the experience beforehand of going on Birthright, and then periodically returning to Tel Aviv to stay with Israelis and former soldiers. I spoke with soldiers who had been stationed in Hebron. I understand being a 20-year old target in hostile territory with the fear of the unknown at
every corner. I was with Israelis in Tel Aviv as sirens blared and rockets were destroyed above our heads. I sympathize with them just as I sympathize with Palestinians. I do not call myself pro-Palestinian or proIsraeli. I favor no people over another. I am pro-justice and pro-peace. On both sides, paranoia and fear have driven many to have ugly views that does not bring people any closer. I have heard people say that Ariel Sharon is not a human being, or watched videos of Netanyahu that were clearly faked. I have listened to the Hamas propaganda music in the cars blaring. Yet, I also listened during Birthright as speakers made Arabs into the enemies who seek to kill every Jew in Israel. I have lived through all my life the storyline of Israel, backs to the wall, fighting for its survival in the face of nefarious neighbors. Being there first-hand, I now know the truth and deceptions of these assertions. Having lived through this all my life, I recognize the propaganda, lies and half-truths that blind so many good people from the truth. As Israeli journalist Gideon Levy once said, this is the only occupation in history in which the occupier thinks it is the victim. As a Jew, I am in no way going against my people. The Israeli government is not my people. It is a government that acts on its own and does good and bad things. For a government to claim any official religion does not shield it of critical thinking by those of that religion. The fact that these horrible acts have been done in my name distorts even further the truth of the matter. As a witness to the truth, what the Israeli government has committed in the West Bank is not out of security, and not out of self-defense. It is done out of an attempt to ethnically cleanse the region. It is done out of an attempt to pacify a people who have been denied their rights and land they have lived on for centuries. It is a system in which people are segregated and given separate identification based on ethnic background, subjected to differing laws, given unequal access to resources and infrastructure and have their rights taken away. I don’t say this from what anyone told me—I don’t say this from what media outlets reporting from Tel Aviv told me, or what my Birthright leader told me, or what everyone told me growing up. I say this with my own eyes as the source. TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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THIS ISRAEL LIFE
THIS IS REAL LIFE STORY AND PHOTOS BY ELISSA LEVINE
T
EL AVIV, Israel—For my last undergraduate summer, all I wanted was a memorable adventure and a meaningful experience I could carry with me to the “real world.” So when the decision came to either take a corporate internship in San Francisco or to work in Tel Aviv for the summer, I knew in my gut what I wanted. Of course, in March 2014, security was more of a consideration that inherently comes with travel to the Middle East than a high-priority debate. I had visited Israel in May 2012, two months after tensions had last come to a boil enough for widespread violence and media coverage. The relative calm in Israel this time around encouraged me and assuaged my parents’ concerns. My mom, typical in her Jewish-parent worry, insisted that my participation was contingent upon two conditions: that I’d call to check in frequently and that I’d leave the
country as soon as “anything happened.” The program, called Excel, is funded in full by Birthright, an organization that sponsors trips to Israel so that Jewish young adults can connect with their heritage and become lifelong supporters of Israel. Typical Birthright trips are 10 days, 40 people and consist of a jampacked itinerary where a bus transports the group around the country to see some of its historical, religious and cultural highlights. Excel, by contrast, was 80 people, 10 weeks and based in Tel Aviv, with weekend trips organized by the program and high-profile speakers, events and lectures nearly every night. In between, we all worked full-time in internships across the city and in nearby Herzliya in startups, consulting, investment banking, venture capital, law and then some. Each participant was assigned an Israeli peer roughly their age with similar interests and pro-
fessional goals. Outside of the program, the peers either study at the Interdisciplinary Center, a private university near Tel Aviv, or serve in an elite intelligence unit in the Israeli Defense Force. The first few weeks in Israel were incredible, in a honeymoon-phase studyabroad kind of way. We traveled as a group of 80 during our first weekend to Ein Gedi, an oasis in the South on the Dead Sea and near the Jordanian border. We got to know our new city—its beaches, the park and river that run through it, its street-side cafes and brunch spots, its bars and clubs. Tel Aviv has an identity as a European-style city with incredible nightlife and more sushi restaurants per capita than Tokyo. We played key roles in one of the world’s most innovative cities, the economic heartbeat of a nation with more high-tech startups and a larger venture capital industry per capita than
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“
The Israel portrayed (or betrayed) by the American media this summer was a battlefield I never saw.”
any other country worldwide. But most of all, we felt at home in Tel Aviv’s dayto-day normalcy—quiet and calm. Then Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah were kidnapped by Hamas militants. That evening, Avia, my Israeli peer, picked me up for a sushi and froyo night in her convertible Fiat blasting Taylor Swift. Talking over the day’s events, she suddenly changed the subject and asked if I’d heard what happened. It was still a developing story; we expressed concern for the boys’ safety, but not for our own. We kept driving and chatting about other things, completely unaware that this moment was the trigger that would prompt the subsequent chain of events. On June 30 they found the bodies. On July 2, Mohammed Abu Khdeir was murdered in retaliation by far-right Jewish extremists. On July 3, we traveled to Jerusalem for the weekend as a group of 80 again on a pre-planned trip. While Tel Aviv’s population is largely comprised of secular Jews, Jerusalem is twice as large and more diverse. We spent the July 4 weekend amid protests by Jews mourning the three boys, protests by Arabs mourning Abu Khdeir, and some not-great press on both sides. I kept a blog this summer, and after Aviv. They emphasized that it had only that trip, I reflected: happened once before, in 2012, and that it was incredibly unlikely that it would JULY 9: I couldn’t stop thinking about how dif- happen now. Tel Aviv’s geographic loferently the United States and Israel deal with cation usually insulated it relatively well the concept of nationalism—the frivolity of In- from attacks compared to the living dependence Day was made immediately evident hell people in the South were enduring among the “price tag” (in essence, an eye for an (acccording to Natal—the Israel Center eye) attacks that spread around Jerusalem. In a for Victims of Terror in War—between country where obligatory military service is as in- 70 and 94 percent of children in Sderot grained in cultural identity as education, political suffer from symptoms of post-traumatbeliefs, or religion, an unfortunate consequence ic stress disorder). Hamas lacked the is how right-wing extremists interpret national- technology and resources, they said, to istic responsibilities. I spent a day that normally launch rockets that could reach Tel Aviv celebrates freedom in America with barbecues, from Gaza, 43 miles away. fireworks and trips to the beach reflecting on the Our meeting ended at 6:30; at fact that in the Middle East, a sense of national- 7:03, I found out what a rocket siren ism is too often the filter that justifies violence. sounds like. More bewildered than scared, we filed into our dorm’s bomb shelter. We On July 7, Hamas fired 80 rockets towaited there for about five minutes, were ward Israel. On July 8, the IDF launched told it was safe to leave and returned to Operation Protective Edge. The directhe lecture that had been interrupted tors of Excel called an emergency secuby the siren. Since 2012, Israel has inrity meeting with all of us to discuss the vested heavily in Iron Dome, the world’s implications of the military action and most advanced mobile defense system, procedures for if a rocket made it to Tel which intercepts missiles in midair over 22 TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
populated areas. Thanks to this technology (developed largely with American funds), the damage caused by rockets to cities like Tel Aviv has been dramatically reduced; small pieces of shrapnel falling from the sky pose a much smaller threat than an explosive rocket. In that moment, returning from my first visit to a bomb shelter, I was livid. It sounds dramatic but it’s also true: this was the first time in my life that someone had tried to kill me. The news I had been reading, always just distant enough to matter but not apply to me, was suddenly personal; my home was under fire, my friends in danger. My grandparents— Holocaust survivors—suffered so that I would live a safe and secure life, and yet the cycle of generalized violence targeting the very same group had circled back two generations later. Per my parents’ requests, that night I called home to check in and assumed they’d seen the news—they hadn’t. When I told them, it became the first of many calls where my mom told me it was time to come home.
For about a week, the tone of the program completely changed. We had security meetings almost daily to discuss changes in the situation; we had bomb shelter visits even more frequently, sometimes multiple times in a day, as the rocket sirens became routine. Each time, our directors posed the option for anyone to go home early if they wanted to. They assured us that if we’d just say the word, they’d book us on the next flight home. But they also reiterated that there was no need to cancel the program, and that for those who wished to remain, we’d continue as normal. Iron Dome’s 90 percent success rate gave us the confidence to simply shift our idea of normalcy and continue living our lives. This, to me, is the essence of Israeli resilience. When your home is under fire, such a mentality is key. But to friends and family back home, it was incomprehensible why I’d want to stick around. JULY 23: But the real reason I’m still here is that in just over a month and a half, I’ve turned into an Israeli. Israelis are often called sabras, paradoxically known for being outwardly tough and inwardly sensitive. I have adopted this mentality (though I like to think I already had it to an extent) and my peers have as well. I can name off-hand at least 10 people I know and care about that have been called back to serve from the reserves, and I worry about them daily. I have a job. I have coworkers that depend on me. I have taken ownership of this city. I take it personally when Israel is criticized in the media; I hurt for the people we have lost. My life here and this conflict are inextricable and my support for Israel is forever changed, solidified.
When the sirens sounded and I was already indoors, I became accustomed to calmly shuffling into the nearest shelter, sending a few friends and my family a quick text to say I was okay and returning to what I had been doing. An app called Red Alert notified users of localized rocket sirens in real-time. My family and I developed a system: they’d get a Red Alert notification of a rocket in Tel Aviv, I’d text them, and within 60 seconds they’d usually know I was okay. When sirens sounded at work, I’d appreciate the unity it fostered in the office—I’d notice the CEO of my company standing alongside the custodial staff and for a few minutes, workplace dynamics, hierarchies and meetings didn’t matter. It was our new idea of normal. The primary consideration for choosing a restaurant was the presence or absence of a bomb shelter, not its Yelp reviews. Wearing headphones was no longer an option, as we’d risk not hearing a siren. We cut out some frivolities, like late night trips on foot to the gelato shop just far away enough to make us uneasy. But we still went to work each day as normal and were expected to remain as productive despite the inevitable daily interruptions. I was caught outside when the sirens sounded three times this summer. While in the South the impact is nearly immediate, in Tel Aviv they say you have up to 90 seconds from the initiation of the siren to when the missile is overhead. Ninety seconds is roughly how long it takes me to realize my alarm is going off in the morning—that’s not the amount of time you want to have to make a decision
when you’re in danger. The first time, I was driving back from a Thai restaurant with two Israeli friends, bagged leftovers in hand. We’d just remarked that we hadn’t had a rocket all day, an inconvenience we’d come to expect. Like clockwork, we heard the quiet wail over the car radio, pulled over, ran into the nearest building (an ice cream store), and huddled in the bathroom with a crying baby and her mother because the building did not have a shelter. The second time, I was in a cab on my way to work. We were on a sort of highway on-ramp, dense with cars in rush-hour traffic, and the entire road just came to a standstill. The only building nearby was a gas station and adjoining convenience store. I’ll be honest: it wasn’t until after I got back in the taxi (he kindly stopped the meter for us) that I realized the danger of standing in a gas station for shelter when explosives might have hit. The third time was a few days later and a little further along the same road, on the same commute, at the same time of day—but this time there was no building nearby. My roommate and I sprinted to an overpass bridge and huddled beneath it along with nearly a dozen young children and an elderly couple. We felt the boom reverberate within us, indicating that the Iron Dome successfully intercepted the rocket right overhead, right as we arrived to our makeshift shelter. In that moment I felt deeply for the elderly couple who might not have had the agility to make it to cover had they been in TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE 23
my position. These three moments together comprise no more than five minutes of my summer, but they’ve come to define it. These stories are the ones I tell most often when people at Duke ask me how Israel was and remark, incredulously but quite obviously, that I’m alive. These are the stories that I also deliberately did not share with my family until now. My summer was so much more than running to shelters, and I resent that my 10-week experience is so frequently boiled down to those moments. I want to write about meeting former Israeli President and Prime Minister Shimon Peres and stumbling on my words, struggling to spit out “Duke University.” I want to share about meeting American philanthropist Lynn Schusterman, worth $4.5 billion and a major benefactor behind Birthright and my summer. I’d rather discuss standing on the Lebanese border overlooking beautiful Rosh Hanikra with family members I had never met before and remarking that I was closer
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to foreign Beirut than familiar Jerusalem. I’d rather talk about how a project I did at my internship was picked up by Forbes. I want to brag about our exclusive tour and night-long hackathon on the 26th floor of Google’s Tel Aviv offices. I want to gush about my Israeli and American friends, the truly incredible people I was surrounded by for the summer. I want to emphasize, again and again, that the Israel portrayed (or betrayed) by the American media this summer was a battlefield I never saw. But the highlights of my experience fall by the wayside, and I share instead that my heart still skips a beat each time I hear an ambulance siren. As the situation deteriorated, 82,201 reservists were eventually called back to serve in the IDF. This amounted to a considerable portion of our Israeli peers, some of whom were on the ground in Gaza. Five days before our program was set to end, one of our peers was badly hurt in the conflict. He served in the unit that transports injured people to hos-
pitals via ambulances and helicopters, a unit Hamas frequently targets. They were hit, and five of the wounded soldiers in their ambulance lost their lives. My friend was on a respirator and in critical condition for a few days, with shrapnel in his lungs and abdomen. He underwent surgery to remove the metal pieces and made a remarkable recovery. Each time I spoke to my parents in the last five weeks of the summer, they tried to convince me to come home early. My mom would plead: “What else has to happen over there for you to realize that you have to get out?” I’d push back my criteria, each time citing a more distant and unlikely hypothetical event that would convince me to leave early. The first time rockets came to Tel Aviv, I was still okay. The first time I almost didn’t find shelter, I was shaken but still okay. But when someone I knew was nearly killed, the conflict had literally hit too close to home—I was finally ready to leave. The timing coincided with the program’s end, but I don’t know what I
would have done if we still had time remaining. No one from our group chose to leave early because of the conflict. We had transformed from Americans to Israelis—the conflict became a part of me. While it changed how we went about our lives in a myriad of subtle ways, our day-to-day lifestyles remained mostly the same. On weekends, we lounged at the beach and swam in the Mediterranean Sea, went to restaurants and bars and had picnic dinners in Park Hayarkon. But our interactions changed. At dinner, we talked exclusively about that day’s news. At work, the receptionist would wish me a quiet evening on my way out. The word “beseder,” Hebrew for “alright” and the standard response to casual how-are-yous took on a different meaning. When I tell friends at Duke that this was the best summer of my life, the confession is usually paired with guilt for feeling that way and being unable (in a reasonable amount of time) to articulate why. I read the puzzlement on my friend’s face each time as he or she
decides not to challenge my enthusiasm, deeming it better not to spark a debate. But I got so much more than an adventure from this summer. I’ve deliberately tried to keep this piece apolitical and nonreligious, because, albeit para-
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doxical, that’s also a big part of my own identity as an American Jew. Ten weeks in the Israel I saw not only immersed me in this world, it nearly drowned me in it. Though it was a reality I accidentally inherited, I regret nothing.
MUSIC@DUKE concerts, jazz, orchestra & band
VICTOR YE
EMMA LOEWE MAGAZINE 26 TOWERVIEW
contributing photographers
HEATWAVE
EMMA LOEWE
BAND
ANTHONY ALVERNAZ
ORCHESTRA
HOPSCOTCH
JAZZ@
IZZI CLARK
GARDENS
YUYI LI
DARBI GRIFFITH
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sa W
hen junior Sarah Stanczyk first arrived at Duke her freshman year, she noticed that she was constantly fighting off colds and other sicknesses passing through campus and decided to see a doctor at her home in Grand Island, N.Y. “If something was going around, I would have it,” she recalled of her freshman year. Although she was tested for various illnesses, her physician gave her a clean bill of health. Still, something did not feel right. Stanczyk, who was a member of the women’s rowing team at the time, had difficulty doing any kind of strenuous activity. “I was excessively tired and had trouble breathing. Exercise became abnormally strenuous for me and I could not get my stamina
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up, regardless of how often I worked out,” she said. In September of her sophomore year, Stanczyk had an alarming warning that what was wrong may be more serious than she had previously thought. Unable to move her neck, Stanczyk spotted lumps that looked like golfballs along her swollen neck. She went to see a doctor, who told her this was not anything to be overly worried about. It was not until she returned from Winter Break her sophomore year that a medical professional at Duke would tell her that she had cancer. “I was in total shock—I had gone to the doctor for something else when it was spotted,” Stanczyk said. “The doctor heard me coughing and checked for pneumonia. I never
imagined he would find lymphoma.” The doctors believe that Stanczyk had been living with cancer, active at the cellular level, for five years before her diagnosis. She was diagnosed with stage 3B Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Doctors had found several tumors in her chest and fluid around her lungs. Although the news was unexpected, Stanczyk was determined to finish her semester at Duke. The biology major and pre-dental student continued nearly all of her classes while undergoing chemotherapy treatments. To balance chemotherapy with the rigors of Duke’s academic life, Stanczyk dropped her extracurricular activities and withdrew from a class. Because Stanczyk was diagnosed as the drop/add period was ending, Duke told her she would have to take a W and explain it
CULTURE
arah’s story Inside Sarah Stanczyk’s 6-month battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma STORY BY BECKY RICHARDS PHOTO BY JESÚS HIDALGO to dental schools later rather than switch into an alternate course load. She ended up taking two one-credit courses and two half-credit house courses. “It was really difficult trying to balance everything,” she said. “Sometimes I acted like I was fine even if I really wasn’t okay because I didn’t want to use the excuse of being sick. A lot of times I would go out to dinner with friends or to go to class when I really should have been home sleeping.” Stanczyk’s friends accompanied her to her regular chemotherapy sessions, helping to pass the time while distracting her from the often painful side effects of the treatments. “Some of her treatments were more painful than others,” said senior Aly Breuer, a close friend of Stanczyk. “But we would just
catch up on school and life, trying to pass the time. We took a lot of snapchats and always ended up laughing.” Despite the pain she endured, Stanczyk continued to display a positive attitude and an appreciation for life at Duke. “I wanted to maintain a sense of routine and to stay on campus with friends. It was also incredibly convenient to live so near to Duke Hospital where the cancer treatment is exceptional,” Stanczyk said. With the support of her family and friends, Stancyzk had another successful semester. “Sarah is unbelievably strong. I still cannot fathom what I would have done in the situation, but Sarah somehow managed to get through all of this while managing a full schedule,” Breuer said.
Stanczyk’s mother flew back and forth from New York for each of her treatments, while her friends proved themselves a dose of good medicine for Stanczyk even in the midst of her worst days. “I know I could not have gotten through this without my friends. From bringing me surprises to sitting through my treatments with me, they showed me they were willing to make sacrifices to be there for me,” said Stanczyk. Stanczyk remained active while undergoing chemotherapy. She still attended her sorority—Kappa Alpha Theta—events and even worked a part-time job as a hostess over the summer. Despite managing to maintain a
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typical Duke experience, her battle with lymphoma was anything but simple. Suffering from chemotherapy side effects—including a phenomenon known as “chemo brain” that causes a loss of memory and of one’s train of thought—Stanczyk underwent a great deal of pain and difficulty. And that is where her friends and the Duke community at large made a real difference. “In the past, I definitely underestimated the community that Duke is,” Breuer said. “But Sarah and I were continuously overwhelmed by the support we received from people reaching out to help her, especially from members of the greek community. They stepped up to help one of their own, and they were willing to contribute in any way possible, even those who may not have had any previous connection to Sarah.” Breuer planned and executed a benefit in April to help pay for Stanczyk’s medical expenses, which took place in Cameron Indoor Stadium. Various student performance groups—including Sabrosura, Duke University Improv and the Pitchforks—participated, and the Duke community came together in a
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time of need. In one night, the entirely student-run fundraiser collected $1,800. “When I decided to plan the benefit for Sarah, I had been trying to think of a way to reach more of the Duke community. The student performance groups each had their own following and were able to extend the reach of the benefit to all members of the Duke community. I didn’t expect so many people to be willing to donate and help out,” Breuer said. “The whole experience has shown me just how much those who care about you can help in times of need, whether they be friends or strangers.” The Duke’s women’s rowing team also contributed to these fundraising efforts by executing a bake sale in Krzyzewskiville before a Duke basketball game. Members of the team sold their own baked goods and publicly practiced on an indoor rowing machine to raise money for Stanczyk. “The fundraiser was very successful,” said senior Emily Hadley, a member of the varsity rowing team who organized the event. “Duke students were eager to contribute, but also alumni and people outside the Duke community were incredibly supportive and really wanted to help Sarah’s cause. Sarah is such
an enthusiastic and supportive teammate that we wanted to remind her that we would all be here for her throughout this whole ordeal.” Stanczyk has been cancer-free for one month and counting. Her experience has given her a new perspective on the meaning of life and friendship. “I was the type of person who always needed to be doing something, but now I am less rushed with things. I realize that I have so much time. Why not enjoy everything more?” Stanczyk reflected. Although she was once adamant on avoiding a gap year after graduating from Duke, a year to take things more slowly is just what Stanczyk hopes to pursue. “Life was too crazy. It’s almost as if I needed something like this to happen to help me re-examine things,” she said. In addition to her renewed perspective on life, Stanczyk has realized over the past year—even more than ever—the value of true friendship, which has deepened her appreciation of others. “Going through all this has helped me become a better friend. I am more focused when I’m with other people, and I try to live in the moment,” she said.
emily briere & Lauren silverstein Seniors Emily Briere and Lauren Silverstein are literally rocket scientists. Combined, the two Pratt School of Engineering students have worked with four different space companies— Briere at NASA Ames Academy and Lockheed Martin, and Silverstein at Honda Aircraft Company and SpaceX. The Chronicle sat down with Briere and Silverstein to discuss women in STEM fields and their current project to land time capsules on Mars. BY SID GOPINATH The Chronicle: What originally attracted you to STEM fields as a student? Emily Briere: I grew up with a scientist mom. So in addition to having a toy room, we had a science lab where we did science experiments. And my dad was an entrepreneur so he was always challenging us to fix problems. So there was a science influence in my life and this innovation influence. I always thought they were really separate. I only realized my first year in college that I could use them together by attacking problems through engineering. In particular, I was always fascinated with space and the concept that space can go on forever. Lauren Silverstein: My story is kind of the opposite. I’m the only scientist or engineer in my family. I grew up mostly with a humanities background. I was inspired in high school by my physics teacher in my junior year. He had studied engineering, and that was my first real intro to it. I started doing a kind of hands-on project. For my first hands-on project, I built a human snow globe. As soon I started using my hands, I knew I had to do this and do something engineering-esque. TC: How does Duke facilitate having women in STEM fields? EB: So, it’s definitely interesting that, besides our basic sciences, I can’t think of a class where I’ve ever had a female professor. We are definitely used to being around a lot of men. At the same time, I’ve never gotten an impression of any favoritism toward males. Duke seems pretty even in terms of the ratio, even though only one-third of the engineers are female.
BRIANNA SIRACUSE
the final exam TC: What are you two currently working on?
to fund two graduate student scholarships to EB: One of the major projects that Lauren work full-time on this project. and I are working on right now is Time Cap- TC: What are your thoughts on the current stasule to Mars. This whole concept started when tus of women in STEM fields? a couple of us—myself, my younger brother EB: Obviously there aren’t as many women as Chris, my father Danny and [president of Re- there are men. There are also definitely some markable Technologies] Eric Knight—were at double standards. For instance, if a woman is the Humans to Mars conference by Explore super demanding and very on top of her stuff, Mars. We were looking at all the technical pre- it can come across as annoying and rude. If a sentations and thinking that there has to be a male did that, it’s expected and business-proway to, one, get space to be more interesting, fessional. You get used to it pretty quickly and two, get students more involved, and, three, get learn to have firm handshakes and business a lot of this really cool technology that is being cards ready. invented into space. Megan Smith, the vice president of GoogleX, The goal of the project is to land several time told me that oftentimes, people will excuse you capsules on the surface of Mars. Eric and Dan- for having one thing different. Maybe you’re a ny discovered the propulsion being developed female. That’s okay. If you’re young and a feat the Space Propulsion Lab at Massachusetts male, or female and a different race, it can be Institute of Technology, which we have been harder. People will have a harder time taking working with ever since. The actual time cap- you seriously. She also talked about how there sule itself is being constructed by students at are a million people that will say an idea is stuDuke, MIT, Georgia [Institute of Technology], pid. But one person will say yes. So, surround Stanford [University], [University of Connecti- yourself with people that believe in you, not cut] and [University of Colorado Boulder]. with people that are going to say no. Explore Mars is our kind of governing orga- LS: My mentor-figure is Gwynne Shotwell, nization, but we have an incredible advisory who is the President [and CEO] of SpaceX. board that includes people like [former astro- She gave a talk to the interns. Someone asked naut] Buzz Aldrin on it. The most exciting part her if she ever felt intimidated being a female is the technology that we are testing—we will in a male industry. She responded by telling us be getting back $25 million worth of data. to never walk into a room thinking that you are LS: Right now, we are doing a crowd funding campaign from [our] website [to fund the project]. You can upload audio, pictures and video for 99 cents.... Eventually, we’re going to do a Kickstarter campaign in the fall.
the only woman in the room. As soon as you let that into the room, it can become a hindrance. In terms of where we hope the future will lead, I kind of hope that eventually this isn’t even a question. I hope that it becomes the norm one EB: We’ve currently raised $1 million in in- day, and people stop questioning it. kind support so far. This was enough for us TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE 31
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