Matt in the Middle East: Get to the Choppa!

I wasn't feeling so great yesterday. I was supposed to present an article by Sammy Smooha in my geography class but we didn't end up having time, so I'm going to present it next week. It's a really interesting article about what kind of democracy Israel is. There are 3 main types of democracies: Liberal (US), Consociational (Belgium) and Herrenvolk (Apartheid South Africa). The paper argues that Israel doesn't fit into any of these 3 and actually belongs in a 4th category called Ethnic Democracy. He makes a compelling case and uses this to argue that the best way to solve the conflict isn't to make Israel a Liberal or Consociational Democracy and certainly not make it a Herrenvolk, but work within the system of an Ethnic Democracy to give minorities more rights while maintaining the Jewish character of the state. Interesting stuff.

After class came back to Dimona to do some work in the youth center. On Mondays now I go there to help kids who stop by with homework but yesterday no one needed help (well, there were a bunch of kids who needed help with science, but I don't know nearly enough science terms in Hebrew to help with that). But there were some kids who came just to hang out after school, so I stayed and watched "הטורף" or "The Predator" with them. They had never seen it before! I almost died when Schwarzenegger yelled "Get to the choppa!" but they all just looked at me.

Today I didn't have classes and stayed home to work on the conference. There was a big problem with our bookings at the hotel in Be'er Sheva and I finally sorted it out. Thank God. Then they were shorthanded at the Youth Center so I went by again and this time there was someone who needed help in math. So I went over some problems with him.

We just had a party for Udi, who is one of the guys in charge of the village. He also runs my group's volunteering at the high school. So we threw the party to say thanks and we all ordered shirts with his picture on them.