Everything made this journey magical and surreal. I was leaving my lil' family behind in a pounding country, slamming Gaza with everything we have after a horrifying attack on a Saturday morning, caught unready - though intelligence was flashing all the red lights to the smug eyes of a crazy bunch of Hedonists and Messianic berserk, roaring jets all day and all night, pounding the neglected status quo' both in the north and in the south, and all of this was in the hands of the worst, most fanatic and hateful government from hell.
But my wheels were in motion, the long awaited actively pursuing these opportunities for almost a decade have come to this January, we are in to deep, and strongly believing in what I do, it was clear that I have to go. I left the key in our bomb-shelter, the room fully equipped, batteries, food, ...toilet paper, tear gas, mattresses, games to pass time (we were requested to prepare for a 76 hour stay...) enough water, cloths, some first aid, a fire extinguisher, smoke masks...and a chilling line on the floor, which I marked with cheap tape - marking the "safe zone" to move to, in case frustrated intruders open fire through the door, hoping to hit us while we sit locked in the bunker, a lesson partially learned, the horrifying way from the victims in the south of Israel.
bullet fire line mark on the floor
And there I am, packing my teaching equipment, with heavy guilt...Heading first to Berlin, to land safely and get accustomed to a real winter, then leaving westbound to the country side- going on a journey...to discuss the price Germany has and still is paying for their crazy time in history when violent perpetrators took over the country by storm...something in my quest felt so wrong and so right at the same time.
After all it was the troubling idea back in 2008 that we, in Israel, are being herded into a colossal present and futuristic disaster which has dawned on me, upon my first visit to Berlin, as I realised for the first time, that I knew nothing of the other nation aftermaths of World War 2.
The grim idea that knowing only partial truths made me subject to manipulation by demagogues, leading me (and probably more than just me) blindly to the next trap, like a swinging pendulum, was an unsettling thought I felt pass through my head as I was scanning the newly replaced rooftops in Berlin Zoo Center, where immense marks of shrapnel and ricochets of massive explosions I saw in Black and white short video clips, suddenly were visible in color.
Maybe, by not learning the sufficient lessons - a perpetrator can easily become the victim, and the victim may become the perpetrator.
Isn't there a physical law describing every action with a counter and equal reaction or something?
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction"
(Sir Isaac Newton's third law of motion) Shot taken with my 9 yr old 🥰
Instead of slowing the pendulum down, resting it peacefully in the middle - the energy is being used for a full and counter reaction. That thought set me out on my photo journey, tracing my own associations, asking questions through visual confrontations, helping me realise how little I knew of the larger scale of events. Maintaining a small scope and narrow point of view has prevented me from understanding the bigger picture.
You can read more about that in my earlier post -