Blog # 1 June 12,
2014
“Welcome to
Israel, Bien Venue”
I often
encounter some metaphorical weirdness on my flights to Israel and true to form,
on my layover in Toronto, my flight leaves from gate E69, but arrows point in
opposite directions and the obvious glass doors to the indicated area are
locked shut. Alice in Wonderland? Where is the white rabbit when I need him? A
helpful info lady explains that that
section of the airport is locked until shortly before check in. Ahhhh. I settle into an anxious,
watchful stupor, and once the doors open, I notice that E69 is also cordoned
off and that another (mild Canadian style, sweep of the wand across my
potentially explosive laden palms) checkpoint is required to entire the now
safe-from-terror zone that is the flight to Tel Aviv.
The
passengers are an eclectic group: a number of Christian religious tours, gold
crosses draped around necks, tee shirts quoting Isaiah and scripture, a “Walk
with the Bible” group, folks on the “Jesus Trail,” lots of prayer and blessings
in general conversation, a large unnaturally enthusiastic Taglit Birthright-Israel
team complete with name tags and youthful happiness, eager to fall in love with
the great Zionist outdoors. Families wearing yarmulkes, kids alternating
“Daddy” and “Abba,” tee shirts in Hebrew, a woman in a hijab with five
children, a man with thick grey hair reading a Russian newspaper.
Eleven plus
hours later, at passport control, the lines are full, hot, sweaty and slow moving.
A US family behind me is coming for a wedding. The father is insisting that
Israel is an egalitarian society and his determined teenage daughter argues
intently that he is indeed wrong. There
is a bank of security devices all made by Hewlett Packard, a US company. Two little Chinese ladies in big hats
chat with another Asian woman on yet another Christian Holy Sites tour. They
are inexplicably turned away from passport control and led away to some unnamed
place. I watch my passport
official carefully; she takes her job seriously, asks lots of questions and is
constantly on the phone. An
ominous sign for me. I review my spiel: nice Jewish lady, loves Israel, meeting
friend who speaks Hebrew, plus check out my last name. Rothchild. It seems to
me that almost everyone sweating in the foreign passport queue is on some kind
of pilgrimage: looking for Jesus, or for a love of Zion and a tan muscular
Israeli soldier to play with in the great outdoors, or for family connections;
and then there is me, looking for the contradictions in this booming, high
tech, flawed, complicated so-called democracy.
I am trying
to resist stereotypes, but as I board the sherut,
(the shared taxi to Jerusalem), the bulky probably Russian driver and an
elderly Orthodox Jewish woman began what appears to be a pretty intense
argument with loud, angry yelling.
She is soon joined by her bearded husband in a long dark coat and
yarmulke with wire rimmed glasses, and this noisy argument continues for a good
15 minutes into the drive. What happened to civility and “using inside voices”
as I used to tell my children? (My slightly sleep deprived fantasy is that he
does not want to sit next to a strange woman and I have already decided to take
a moral stand: I will not give up my single seat, but that apparently was not
the issue. My paranoia relaxes but the tension in the van is still palpable.) I can feel this peculiar cultural
insanity creeping into my pores. Shortly thereafter the couple begin chatting
(loud but friendly) with another older man in a mix of Hebrew and Yiddish. It
seems all the personality disorders are now under control.
The heat is
thick and there is a haze over the landscape, tall cities cluster like stark giant
grey legos, the fields and hills are turning from green to straw-brown. We turn
onto highway 443, past Modi’in, acres of Jewish National Fund pine forests,
(often covering destroyed Palestinian villages), young Israeli soldiers wait at
bus stops, gigantic cranes and concrete cities mushroom everywhere. We are soon
on the segment that it is actually in the West Bank (does anyone else on the
sherut know this???) The metal fencing begins, Palestinian houses in the distance
have black water tanks on their roofs due to the erratic water supply, looming
grey Israeli guard towers flash by.
The ancient hills are terraced, bleak and magnificent, rugged, graceful
olive trees hug the soil. The separation wall is now concrete, there is more
rolling barbed wire. We stop briefly at an Israeli checkpoint and then are
waved through. I guessed we passed the ethnic profiling test. I see the ominous
grey prison just near the turn off to Ramallah, probably Ofer Prison. I think of all the Palestinian hunger
strikers protesting in Israeli jails.
The walls along the highway are now turning more picturesque, patterned
brick designs, (making the occupation pretty?) and then more imposing and
concrete as we near the Holy City.
We return to
highway #1 and head into Jerusalem and begin a brief tour of the Jewish
settlements. The two older
“yellers” are met in Ramat Shlomo by their happy family and four grandchildren,
all modestly attired. They leave their Yiddish buddy with a friendly, “Yalla”
which is Arabic for “Let’s go.” We are then off to the Jewish settlements of
Pisgat Ze’ev and French Hill, a former Arab neighborhood, an older Orthodox man
shouts at a car that has stopped in the cross walk, gesturing fitfully. We pass the refugee camp of Shufat. More
opaque walls. I watch with my x ray vision, all the history, the conflict, the
players, the demons, are all here in living color, if one only stops to look. Is anyone looking?
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