September 12, 2003: Volume 59, Number 1

Editor Dibbell '04 returns from Israel trip

Perhaps the most frequently asked question of Jeremy Dibbell '04 upon his return from Israel this summer was, "How do they cope with the terrorism?"

"They deal with it," he said after returning from a trip with a dozen college journalists from the 11th annual Anti-Defamation League Albert Finkelstein Memorial Study Mission to Israel, Poland and Bulgaria.

"They deal with it because they have to," he said. "They are a very strong people. They know what they have to get through and they do it."

Dibbell, who at one point could hear Israeli shelling in response to Palestinian terror strikes, said, "You don't get used to it, but you get used to knowing that it could happen and to move on."

He said his group was accompanied by an armed guard (as are most tours, he said) and that they never felt in danger.

Dibbell, a political science major and editor-in-chief of Concordiensis, met with government officials, historians, journalists and others to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian situation and the history of Jewish communities in Europe and the Holocaust.

The group toured the Auschwitz death camp, and visited Bulgaria, which has a proud history of resistance against the Nazis, Dibbell said.

Bulgarian officials, Dibbell noted, also talked of their tolerance. "They talked a good talk, but the difference between talk and reality are huge," he said. One poverty-stricken community had no running water, while a prosperous adjacent community was watering the lawns on their golf courses, he said.

Dibbell, who took copious journal notes and photographs, said he plans to run a story on the experience in Concordiensis this fall.

He and others in the group were chosen from about 100 applicants nationwide.

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