There is a city in Israel with bomb shelters spaced every 100 yards.
The people there have only 15 seconds to hide from the time someone in neighboring Gaza sends a bomb over.
Most of Israel is not like that though, said University of Idaho junior Sydney Silbert. Silbert traveled to Israel over the summer and visited several places within the country, including the city with the many bomb shelters. She said most people want a resolution to the conflict.
“I think there are extremists on both sides, which makes the people stuck in the middle very fearful and hateful, but ultimately everybody just wants to coexist,” Silbert said. “But the extremists are what we see in the news.”
This summer marked Silbert’s third trip to Israel. She said she studied abroad there in high school for two months and years later has traveled again on a birthright scholarship, which gives anyone of Jewish descent a 10-day trip to Israel to learn about their heritage.
“That kind of re-sparked everything for me,” Silbert said. “Now I was three years older and I really identified with it more and I was inspired by one of my guides on that trip to apply for Hasbara Fellowships.”
Hasbara Fellowships is a program to teach college students about Israel and regional conflicts. Silbert said the goal is for those students to bring the conversations and education back to their campus. She said she is working on starting a social media campaign and is focused on getting the conversation started.
Silbert said she loves going to Israel. To her, it feels comfortable and homey. Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, is just like any other modern cosmopolitan city, Silbert said.
She said the country is strongly rooted in its Jewish heritage, but not necessarily the Jewish religion. While there are no laws requiring restaurants to be kosher or closed for Shabbat, Silbert said there is so much Judaism there that they simply are that way.
“It’s just like any other place, except you know that everybody has that same connection of like, ‘You’re in Israel because you want to be in Israel,’” Silbert said.
A friend of Silbert’s, Hannah Scheppke, said she thinks it’s cool that Silbert expands her horizons and grows as a person every time she visits Israel.
“The main thing is how into her heritage she is,” Scheppke said. “She really like, embraces it and I think that’s really important, because a lot of people don’t want to. Sydney’s one of the biggest people I know that like, emphasizes it. It’s a part of her and she just always brings it out.”
Scheppke said Silbert’s travels show that she is not afraid to be by herself or try new things.
“She’s adventurous and open-minded to all the different possibilities out there, or like, if there’s an opportunity she’s going to go take it, and I think that’s really cool,” Scheppke said.
Silbert learned about the current issues going on in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon because they are so close to Israel. She said there are diverse and conflicting opinions from many people and groups about the future of the region.
With extreme opinions on both sides, Silbert said it is difficult to get people to come together. One example is the dispute between Palestine and Israel. She said people in both countries harbor extreme resentment toward the other, but it isn’t as black and white as people in America perceive it to be.
“There’s people in the middle like ‘You are humans too. We understand that you want your own place also,’” Silbert said.
She said she isn’t sure how the conflict will be resolved, because there are so many different backgrounds and viewpoints.
“The word I keep finding myself to go back to is ‘coexistence,’” Silbert said. “That’s really what I’m hoping for and what I am for and what I would love to see in the Middle East.”
Jack Olson can be reached at [email protected]