Published: 23 July 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE in Israel this week. And I know this is a first-world problem amid a global pandemic, but I am still a little sad.
A major perk of my job is travelling to Israel every year with a group of young adults, visiting grantees and meeting interesting people through our Fellowship program. It has also been an opportunity to reconnect with family, as well as friends my husband and I made when living in Israel for 10 years. Having visited the past three years in a row, the vast distance between Israel and Australia seemed to shrink a little.
With the arrival of Covid, however, the gulf seems wider than ever.
Mandatory two-week isolation at both ends, few flights and a recent spike in infected numbers in Israel have made me feel it may be a long time before I return.
I have learnt a lot being back in the country regularly. Reading the Israeli media daily from afar is not the same as having ongoing conversations with a wide variety of people in terms of gauging popular sentiment and attitudes. Travelling is a wonderful opportunity to learn, observe and step out of one’s bubble.
As a student I travelled and studied overseas, which broadened my understanding of the world. As part of my master’s course I spent several months in Cairo studying Arabic at the British Council, eating ridiculously cheap koshari, ful and falafel and travelling throughout Egypt. I loved it. Since I had already spent time in Israel, it seemed both familiar and foreign.
This was just before the Oslo Accords in 1993 and it felt like the Middle East was on the cusp of significant change, with endless opportunities on the horizon. I even got myself a second passport issued with no Israeli stamps as I envisioned travelling across the region. That dream now seems more elusive than ever.
Despite the unofficial warming of ties between the Gulf states and Israel, today’s fractured and war-torn Middle East is not a major tourist hotspot despite its many attractions.
Somehow, it feels that despite globalisation, the world is shrinking inward. The legacy of looking inward is we become less educated and empathetic, and more blinkered.
The harrowing images of beheadings by ISIS, the bombed-out shells of Syrian cities, the indefinite detention of political pawns in Iranian jails (including Australian academics) as well as the public hangings of gay Iranians, the flogging and detention of liberal bloggers in Saudi Arabia, and the images of war-ravaged Yemen, do not a Middle East travel brochure make.
There is a growing list of countries I may never visit, including Afghanistan, Somalia, Niger. You get the idea.
I don’t even think I would return to Egypt, although I would love to share my nostalgic experiences with my family and go diving in Sinai again. There has been too much political unrest and too many fatal attacks on tourist sites. I recognise it’s not a rational response; I would still visit Europe despite violent attacks there over the past few years, and the US, even with its rampant gun violence.
Somehow, it feels that despite globalisation, the world is shrinking inward.
The legacy of looking inward is we become less educated and empathetic, and more blinkered about countries we don’t understand, whose people we never meet. This reinforces our bubbles, both on social media and in our neighbourhoods, leading to increased insularity and resistance to leaving our cultural comfort zone.
This fear of the other and the unknown is the worst thing for an increasingly polarised world, as the civil unrest and acrimony in the US demonstrate. It breeds intolerance and resistance to new ideas and ways of doing things.
I wonder what the long-term impact will be on the broader Australian travel wanderlust, as well as how we see our ourselves in the world.
For the first time many Australians are discovering where their state borders lie, rather than thinking of themselves as global citizens. Those in lockdown in public housing in Melbourne have found their worlds shrunk even further, literally to their doorstep.
I hope Australia doesn’t become stuck in its own world, even if almost no one is going anywhere for a long time. We can embrace some of the international benefits of lockdown, including the unprecedented global co-operation in producing a vaccine, the almost endless pool of talent available for online meetings and exchange of ideas through webinars, etc.
I look forward to a time when our horizons can expand again.
Photo: The author during one of the NIF fellowship trips two years ago, in an unrecognised Bedouin village
