Well, that’s it from Jerusalem. I’ve moved out of my apartment, and am currently stealing some WiFi out on a nearby playground while I wait for my Sherut (shared taxi–nifty little thing that pretty much every other country in the world has discovered) to Ben-Gurion airport. Moving out was a truly ridiculous procedure, I have to say. After cleaning my room and moving everything out, I was required to have it inspected in person by a staff member, then go sign a form saying that it had been inspected, get a copy of it, and then walk a half mile to deliver the form to another office on campus so that they’ll release transcripts. Evidently, the idea of putting this forms into an envelope at the dorm, and shipping them en masse to another office never occurred to Hebrew U–instead, they’d rather have 200 people individually make the trek to deliver the form. Argh.
As they were checking out my room, though, the guy asked me where I was from. I said the U.S., and he looked absolutely astounded. ”I thought you were English!” he exclaimed. When I asked why, he responded “Your room was clean!”. Needless to say that Ben (a Brit himself) was very pleased.
Anyways, I’m planning on continuing to blog (although with a bit less frequency, what with school and all), and I’ll leave this up as my blog for whenever I’m traveling again. Hopefully that won’t be too long from now, and I’ll have more adventures and photos to throw at you soon. In the meantime, check out flickr for a more complete inventory of my pictures from this trip.
Signing off from Jerusalem,
Hal
P.S. Does anything else think this could go very wrong, very fast?
In between waxing political, relaying witty anecdotes about my adventures and, y’know, taking time to actually have said adventures, I haven’t really been able to talk about probably one of the more interesting times I’ve been fortunate enough to have here in Israel.
Despite the inevitable disclaimer of our program coordinators that it was strongly inadvisable to go anywhere near the West Bank–there was no need to mention that going into Gaza would be an act of insanity–I haven’t met a single person who heeded that warning. Most people took the opportunity to spend a day in Bethlehem, Nablus or Jericho, and the historical sites in the area. But at the suggestion of one of the guys in our program, Ben and I decided to see some of the West Bank in a slightly different way.
We manage to get in touch with this group out of Tel Aviv called Breaking The Silence (or Shovrim Shtika, in Hebrew). It’s an organization started by former IDF soldiers–which is, for the most part, the entire Israeli population–who are trying to start a broader conversation about the occupied territories that does not center on the security issues involved. In the view of the leader we spoke to, mainstream Israeli society’s outlook on the situation amounts to: “Let the IDF do whatever they need to do so that we’ll be safe in our coffee shops in Tel Aviv. What goes on inside isn’t our problem”. Thus, while there is widespread discussion about matters such as the security fence, checkpoints, policies on Palestinian employment within Israeli lines, the silence that this theatrically-named group seeks to break is more to do with the internal policies of the Israeli government, specifically military operations in the refugee camps, and unequal legal conditions in “C Areas”. Rather than staging protests or lobbying members of the Knesset (those are well-covered bases), the organization has three main areas of activity: recording testimony from soldiers leaving their service in the IDF, sponsoring traveling photography exhibits of what they view as human rights violations in the West Bank, and leading tours into Hebron, showing both tourists and soon-to-be-conscripted Israelis a side of Hebron that isn’t usually discussed in the mainstream press. In short, they hope to dispel the idea that there is such a thing as an “enlightened occupation”, and that any occupation has a moral price tag.
What’s so remarkably effective about this strategy, I think, is that this group can’t readily be dismissed as a bunch of hippie radicals. BTS isn’t comprised of so-called “refuseniks”. Every member has served already, and many continue as IDF reservists, although they have filed for conscientious objector status to serving in the Palestinian Territories. This is not a college student with a “Free Palestine” flag in their dorm window. These are soldiers saying not even ‘this is what I have seen’, but ‘this is what I and many others have done, and we ought to be troubled that we were ordered to do so, and could carry out that order so easily’.
Needless to say, this sounded like an intriguing trip. The group is currently barred from Hebron, after their last tour was attacked by Jewish settlers in the area–the police have declared BTS tours to be a ‘disruption to public order’. But while their lawsuit against the Israeli government proceeds, they are offering tours to South Hebron. So, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, we boarded a bus one Friday morning for Hebron.
Our drive started with a tour of the West Bank highway system. It looks more or less like this:
The wall is 14 meters high, and in fact separates two roadway systems. There are literally highways for use by Israelis traveling to the Settlements and IDF controlled areas, and roads for use by those living under PA control. Certain villages near the green line–the 1967 border of Israel–are to be completely encircled by the wall, with one guarded tunnel in and out.
Our first stop was to a place called Lucifer’s Farm. Or, more accurately, to about a half mile from Lucifer’s Farm. It’s one of many places that are referred to as ‘Outposts’ in the West Bank. During the now-defunct Oslo Accord negotiations, one of the terms agreed to was that Israel cease establishing settlements in the West Bank (note: that seems to have changed recently). Most of the settlements in the West Bank are populated by the most hard-core of hard-core religious zionists. As I’ve been able to understand from this tour, as well as professors I’ve spoken to on this program, many of them are almost cult-like, closed off from the outside world. They believe that these settlements are fulfilling a divine mandate for Jews to reclaim the entirety of Judea and Samarra as a pre-requisite for the Messiah’s coming. Many of them even choose not to recognize the Israeli government, and in any case, this condition didn’t go over well. In response, there was a widespread practice of ‘outposting’. As essentially an act of civil disobedience–although it doesn’t really stay civil, as you’ll see–settlers would go in the middle of the night to a hill maybe 10km from their legal settlement, and start building. Temporary structures, shacks, anything. The message was simple: this land belongs to us, and not only are we not leaving, we’re going to expand.
This is really where the whole internal story of the West Bank gets interesting. Because the Israeli government’s response to these outposts was–well, that’s just it. Nothing. No outposts have been demolished thirteen years on from Oslo. What’s more, these outposts were often built in the middle of farmland where Palestinians grazed their cattle. There are widespread accounts of settlers arming themselves and shooting at any Palestinians who came near the area. In response, of course, a “Security Buffer Zone” [the technical term] was established around the outposts, into which no Palestinians could venture, until the conflict was resolved. Hence, we stayed pretty far from Lucifer’s farm.
The whole story was painted more vividly, though, when we were taken to meet a Palestinian family living near Sunya in South Hebron. As Nasser, the head of this family tells it, they were farmers who had been living on an otherwise largely untouched plot of land for about four generations, and in fact little had changed since the Six-Day War. Until, of course, archaeologists discovered that in the middle of their farmland laid the ruins of a synagogue from the Second Temple Period. Overnight, the area was declared a national park, and the family was forced to relocate. They moved just outside of the new park, and started to erect new buildings. These were torn down, as they did not have the proper building permits. The process of even applying for a building permit would consume about three months salary of an average Palestinian family, and since the committee consists of half IDF soldiers, and half settlers from the region, it’s nigh impossible for Palestinians to get building permits in C Areas. That, of course, hasn’t stopped these folks. They keep returning, and erecting more shelters, which are also under demolition orders from the IDF. The case is pending in Israeli courts, but for the moment, this is what their village looks like:
Those are Red Cross issue tents–surprisingly roomy, actually. Before those whole thing started, they lived in caves, which were demolished (we saw the evidence). The wells were collapsed, and in one particular well soldiers shoved an entire car down the opening (again, we saw it) so as to poison the water with gasoline, oil, and the metals of the frame.
But honestly, that’s not what gets Nasser and his family, in the end. It’s that right now, in the middle of the National Park from which they were removed, is a Settler Outpost. It’s been there for about ten years now, and no legal action has been taken against it. Moreover, there are constant skirmishes between this family and the illegal settlers. Nasser told our group about once incident about two weeks ago. From his perspective, he and his brothers were taking their sheep out to graze in what is supposedly neutral territory. Or, as neutral as possible when nobody’s really supposed to be living there. As they did so, a group of settlers came over the hill, and started throwing rocks. The Palestinians retreated, and called the police. When the cops showed up, they went the Outpost first, then came and arrested Nasser’s brother, since the Settlers had made an identical claim. His brother was in jail for a week before being arrested without charge. No settlers were arrested.
Miscarriages of justice happen, and there are as always two sides to every story. But then we met some of the volunteers. There are three folks from Ireland living with this family right now, and mostly, they videotape. When they go out to graze, the volunteers are there with cameras to record these sorts of incidents. Often, the police confiscate them as evidence, and they’re never returned, but every now and then, one makes it to the media. We were shown some of the tapes that they still had. The one that was burned into my memory showed a group of Jewish settlers–women and boys, mainly, sitting on a rock slope. This was taken on Saturday, when there are no Jewish schools in session, but Muslim schools are. When students as the Islamic school started to walk out, the group of settlers stood up as one, and started throwing rocks at them, shouting any number of murderous slogans. In the background stood a group of soldiers, who stood there, not doing anything. When we asked our guide why this happened, he said that there is so much political backing for the Settlers that it is “more trouble than it’s worth to try arresting them”. There are also stories like this–we saw a similar version, without the chains.
On the tours to Hebron that were led until recently, visitors were able to meet with some members of the Settler population (the settlement in Hebron proper is legal under Israeli law). In South Hebron, it’s all outposts, who it seems are less amenable to dialogue about an issue. From the one side I saw, though, there aren’t words to describe how heartbreaking it is. It seems to epitomize the Israeli policy of “deciding not to decide” when it comes to the West Bank–everything’s in limbo, and no one can count on justice. It truly reminded me of the cinematic Wild West.
The trip closed with our guide talking specifically about his experience as a soldier in Hebron. I could never do justice to his account, and you can find most of the stories, among hundreds of others, here. If you have some spare time, I strongly recommend reading them. For those Carleton folk, I also have a bound book of them, if you’d like to save your eyes a little bit.
I’ve heard no shortage of arguments over this issue. Truth be told, I’m beginning to see why so many cynics here just say “There will never be peace, so the only thing left to do is to build bigger walls”. I can entertain so many arguments from the non-Palestinian side (I’m not going to say ‘The Israeli Side’ any longer, because it seems as though very diffuse arguments–many made out of solidarity rather than any interest in the issue–could only be charitably be called a side), about historical rights to the land, security issues, rightful conquest during a time of war, et al. But what I’ve seen on this tour, and at checkpoints in Ramallah, there’s an issue that completely escapes this maddening question of land and determination. Breaking the Silence, I believe, is absolutely right when it claims that there’s a price tag to occupation beyond perpetuating the security threat. There’s no such thing as a humane, enlightened occupation. Evidently, in Israeli schools children are taught that the IDF is better, that stories of abuse and dehumanization don’t happen in the West Bank. And honestly, I used to believe the same thing as an outsider. But at a certain point, you have to ask the question: is it worth it? Is the damage to Israel’s national conscience, not to mention the dehumanization of an entire society, really worth it?
I’m in no position to say yes or no. I have no historical, religious, or security stake in this. But it seems that the sooner Israeli society is pushed to answer that question, the better. Because deciding not to decide just doesn’t seem to cut it here.
In addition to the below post, I’ve finally gotten around to putting some of my pictures online. Those of you on facebook have already seen them, but for those of you who choose to live a real life, you can find them here. Flickr has some upload limits, and as I’m too cheap to shell out for one of those nifty pro-accounts, it’s pretty much just a highlight reel. But there are about thirty shots–not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Enjoy!
There was a video that made the news here this week:
It’s a bit blurry, but it’s a video of a Palestinian teenager, blindfolded and handcuffed after having thrown rocks at soldiers. It shows an IDF (Israel Defense Forces) soldier firing a rubber bullet at him from two feet away. He fired it into his foot, but I have a hard time listening to the “no lasting harm, no foul” defense. Torture is defined as the willful infliction of psychological or physical suffering on an individual who has been rendered defenseless. Degrees within the torture field seem to me somewhat irrelevant.
These stories are hardly groundbreaking. They’re in every newspaper, every UN Human Rights Commission Report, every Amnesty International Report. They’re videotaped by the Red Cross and Christian Peacemaker Teams. Invariably, there are promises of investigation, occasionally court martials and jail sentences are handed down, and life goes on in the West Bank and Gaza, perturbed only by a few bad apple soldiers.
I have my own opinions about the IDF and the policies of occupation— worth discussing at some point later—but that isn’t what troubles me the most about these episodes. It is, for one example, the comments following this editorial in the Jerusalem Post. This one, in particular:
I can only imagine where the arab would have shot us. Like Regev and Goldwasser ,May they rest in peace,who did not get shot by a rubber bullet in the toe! (sic)
I know that the body of people who have time to prowl the comments board on online newspapers include a higher than usual concentration of, well, nutcases. Nutcases with sub-par English skills, in this case, especially if you read the rest of the comments. It’d be laughable, except for the fact if there’s one thing I’ve observed in the month I’ve spent here, it’s that this is not a sentiment confined to the fringes of society. I’m not talking about the graffiti throughout Jerusalem that reads “Arabs to the gas chambers”–although the sheer amount of it is staggering. I’ve heard less rant-like versions of the same sentiment voiced by my roommate, an Israeli law student, countless students on this program (mostly Americans), and from friends and teachers back home. The more benign versions tend to take the form of:“This is kinda bad, but I wish the media would talk instead about the Eight Yeshiva students murdered by the Palestinians” or “Yeah, but we can’t lose sight of the horror of Palestinian terrorism—why doesn’t the media ever talk about those?”.
It’s beyond self-evident that being injured is a superior outcome to being dead. And the coverage of the Yeshiva students and the countless suicide bombings that have rocked Jerusalem and Tel Aviv at various points was immense. They are traumas well-documented, and I don’t think anyone would seriously suggest that these are stories that haven’t been talked about sufficiently—or at least, as sufficiently as possible when we’re talking about large-scale loss of life. These statements aren’t made to argue this. Rather, they’re made to say explicitly that these cases aren’t worth being talked about. They’re made to say that in light of Israeli suffering, abuse and torture is really A-O.K. They’re made to argue for silence lest Israel’s image be damaged. They’re made to make a judgment about which is worth more: Jewish suffering or Palestinian suffering? And inherent within that judgment, which type of person is worth more: A Jew or an Arab?
The idea of comparing sufferings is problematic, and can quite often stray into not-so-subtle racism. But in a way, I think it’s almost as dangerous when weighing forms of violence becomes a part of the need for “balance” in talking about conflict. I was talking with a friend here–who would by no means call himself a supporter of the occupation–recently about these cases, and he added, as an afterthought: “Of course, they don’t really talk about the suicide bombings, but it’s still just awful”.
Balance is a tricky thing. Balance is getting perspectives on a single incident, conflict, or event. In the case of this video, for instance balance would be including statements from soldiers and military commanders responsible for the incident. Balance when it comes to discussing the situation in the West Bank would be including responses from Settlers, IDF personnel, and Palestinians who feel that their rights are being suppressed. But when the issue is a documented case of abuse, balance isn’t gained from simply juxtaposing an incident that is related only in that it occurred within the context of an ongoing armed dispute. I very much understand the spirit in which such afterthoughts are intended: as an acknowledgment of sufferings on both sides, and that pain all too often feeds directly into retaliatory instinct. It’s not the same as the ridiculous comments after news editorials. But by contextually justifying violence, it does reinforce a paradigm of conflict that demands retribution.
Whenever we feel the need to mention suicide bombings, or bulldozer attacks, or shooting sprees whenever we talk about the tactics of the IDF, we contribute to a paradigm that says because violence exists on both sides, all violence is the same, and we have no right to judge, or even focus on, one form over another. Violence is universally an affront to our most basic of human rights, but it is not all the same. It is, I think, almost exactly the opposite. Violence isn’t a disease imposed equally upon two groups of people, it’s a choice made in different ways by each and every individual who acts to take a life. Making sure that we’re “balanced” in our treatment of it diminishes the unique horror of each act, treating the perpetrator as just one more victim of a disease that does not discriminate. The immediate effect is to provide a justification for nearly any abuse–that there is no such thing as war crimes because all wars are crimes, essentially; That we need to oppose the abstract, nebulous concepts of War and Violence, and not waste our time thinking about what would cause a person to fire a weapon at a blindfolded, handcuffed person at point-blank range.
I’ll be the last to argue that war and violence shouldn’t be opposed, but they don’t deserve to be capitalized. War and violence aren’t proper nouns. They need to be fought as manifestations of structural problems that can be attacked–working to eradicate environments of poverty, oppression, hatred, religious extremism, and poor education might be a start. But I believe that one of those ways is to never lose sight of the humanity of violence. It’s easy to become desensitized to the fact that it is a sentient human being choosing to wantonly inflict pain, but if we do, we lower the best guard against joining a violence cycle ourselves: the awareness that the potentially for violence is latent within almost every person. That capacity is universal, but acting on it is unique. By allowing the infliction of pain to recede into a monolith without faces or specific instances, we tacitly justify it under the category of Violence. The more we look at our capacity for unthinkable acts as being something outside ourselves, the more I worry about our capacity to prevent it.
I’ve been feeling very transient lately. And by lately, I mean for quite a while. The other day, in fact, I looked at a calendar, and figured out that of the last seven months, a full three of them will have been spent somewhere in the Middle East or North Africa. And that’s not to mention the fact that even when I’m in the central time zone this summer, I’m shuttling back and forth on a near constant basis. Suffice it to say, it’s just a little bit tiring. Much of this, I think, has to do with the fact that of these travels, they’ve nearly all been essentially “academic tourism”. In Egypt, Turkey, and now Israel, I’ve been staying in dorms, and striking out on my own each day to find something interesting to do. That’s fine, to an extent–I like having my own space as much as anyone else. But it’s also isolating in so many ways, and makes me more and more aware of the complete lack of cultural interaction. Looking around the program here, it seems that the vast majority of students clump together in groups from their home country, and go bar-hopping every single night (that last bit isn’t too much of an exaggeration either). I understand the mentality very well–unless you have something to force you out of your cultural and linguistic comfort zone, it’s so easy to retreat into a familiar environment.
This weekend, though, I had a marvelous chance to break out of that rut. My friend Ben’s dad works from the UK for an Israeli company, Arava, that is the main wholesale exporter for many farms in Israel and the West Bank. He phoned up Yair, one of the liaisons between the growers and the company, and asked him if he wouldn’t mind showing the two of us around some of the Jordan River Valley, in the northern part of the West Bank. Yair, of course, wasn’t content to merely give us a day tour. He insisted that we spend the weekend with him and his family up in Ya’avneel, a small town not far from the foot of the Golan Heights. And so, after a great deal of phone tag, off we went on Thursday morning, hopping a bus to Bet She’an instead of going to our morning class.
After meeting us at the bus stop, our tour began. He took us along the security fence that encircles the West Bank, built in 2002 as a means of stopping Palestinians from crossing into Israel without permission. It is, to say the least, slightly chilling to imagine people living behind this:
The IDF claims that that fence has cut down on terrorist attacks by 90% (although interestingly, they’ve also conceded that most suicide bombers were entering through checkpoints…), although it has also been condemned by human rights organizations–mainly on the grounds that it cuts off access to medical care and employment. The economy in the West Bank is in shambles, and since the fence went up Palestinians are not allowed to spend the night in Israel, significantly limiting the type of employment available. Here, it’s just a barbed wire, electrified fence. Near Jerusalem, it’s a 14-foot-high concrete barrier.
The growers we spoke to had conflicting feelings about the situation in the West Bank. The northern part of the territory is not nearly as segregated as others, and these growers are somewhat exceptional in that they mostly chose to employ an all-Palestinian workforce on their farms. To man, each of them said something to the effect of: “There is no hatred up here. If I were the PM, I could solve the West Bank problem in five minutes over a cup of coffee”. At the same time, though, they said that the economic situation created problems. The farms themselves are surrounded by barbed wire, evidently because teenagers from nearby villages are known for breaking in and stealing anything lying around, including ripping copper out of the electrical system to sell.
The whole time, though, the idea that relations in this part of the West Bank are entirely normal was too ridiculous to stomach. You have an entire group of people living behind a patrolled, barbed wire fence, within which there are even more fortified “Israeli Only” areas–known as “C Zones”, along with “Palestinian Only” areas, or “A Zones”. The settlements look like quaint suburbs, while we drove past Palestinian towns littered with burnt out cars, amalgamations of lumber and sheet metal that might charitably be called shelters, and broken bottles. Areas where, according to Yair, no Israeli would drive unarmed at night. That’s not to say that the security concerns aren’t very, very real, as any newspaper published in, say, 2005, can attest. But each time one of the farmers claimed that everything was peaceful, that relations between Israeli settlers and Palestinians were as great as could be, I couldn’t help but think about how this segment of the society is so privileged as the sole source of economic advancement (to use the term loosely) that they have the opportunity to ignore the glaring inequality of the situation.
This is an area that is so rarely discussed in coverage of what is going on in the West Bank. I don’t necessarily blame the mainstream media for running the stories of crisis–Gazans unable to get medical care, bombings, dismantling settlements. Those are the stories that sell, the stories to which a reporter can, without too much trouble, get the facts and tell a story. But I have a hard time believing there’s not another side to the story here, in which privilege, power, and harsh economic realities play out another West Bank drama, unfolding without any explosives or bullets. One has to wonder what it is that pushes someone over the edge from one conflict into another.
While politics dominated our whole weekend no matter where we were–if you’ve ever heard the stereotype that Israelis LOVE to talk politics at every opportunity, well, that’s one preconception to which I’ve found little contradictory evidence–staying with Yair and his family was a real treat. Yair showed us around some absolutely stunning places in the area, including the Golan Heights. Absolutely gorgeous–I can understand a little better why Syria might want them back…
Sunset over the Sea of Galilee
Beyond taking us around the Galilee and the Golan Heights and the juxtaposed sites of beauty and violence, they simply opened up their entire home to us for the weekend. As much as we enjoyed the hospitality and the chance to just relax a little bit, I have to say that Ifrit, their four-year-old, probably enjoyed it more.
As you can see, Ben was essentially designated as a piece of mobile British playground equipment for the weekend. Each morning, at 6:30 in the morning, we were awakened by a sharp poke to the head, along with a menacing glare that said: “Why are you not up and playing with me yet?”. Oy…
Anyways, it was a marvelous weekend. I’m back in Jerusalem now, just doing the whole class thing. Truth be told, the academic program itself is pretty underwhelming, so I’m just trying to spend as much time exploring as I can. Barack Obama is in Israel today, and there was talk among some of us of trying to pin down when he’d be at the Western Wall so that we could try to catch a glimpse of him or–dare I say it?–snag a picture together in front of the Temple Mount. Sadly, though, I don’t think that’s going to happen.
I’ll be working to put up some more of my photos up on Flickr sometime soon, so you can see what I’ve seen in all its digital glory. Stay tuned!
Perhaps Bush could send the surgeon general to Jaffa with the next U.S. Foreign Aid package to Israel?
This weekend, we decided that a little adventure was required, after experiencing the complete quiet of Jerusalem on Shabbat. Our first thought was to pop down to Masada, an ancient fortress overlooking the Dead Sea, but a lack of bus space put the hatch on that one. So, just prior to our bomb squad adventure (check out the post below), we resolved to head out early Friday morning for Tel Aviv, where most things are open on Friday nights and Saturdays.
I’m not ordinarily much of a swimmer, but the beaches in Tel Aviv are really something else. Before the Aswan dam threw a monkey wrench into the Mediterranean ecosystem, the sand used to be absolutely golden, deposited here by the Nile delta. Still, I couldn’t tell the difference:
Anyways, after spending most of the afternoon in the water, with plenty of sunburn to prove it (Yes, Mom, I used plenty of sunscreen!), Abby went home to Jerusalem while Ben and I decided to stay for the night and see what happens after the sun goes down. We went to a hostel that had been highly recommended to me by my friend Erik, who spent last summer in Israel, but their rooms were full. Fortunately, however, regulation of lodging isn’t as strict in Israel, so for 55 Shekel (about $15), we were able to snag these accommodations:
Seriously, if you’re ever given the chance to sleep out on the roof of a building, I highly recommend it.
The problem with this grand plan, however, is that neither of us is really into the dance club scene. After assuring ourselves that we were still cool, and that had either of us thought to bring stylish clothes, we would most assuredly be at the club, we went and had a pint or two at a local bar, checked out the beach parties at night, and called it an early evening around midnight.
The next morning, though, we headed down to Jaffa about a mile down the coast from Tel Aviv. Quite an old city, it’s essentially now a suburb of Tel Aviv, known for it’s flea market, and it’s citadel, which has now been turned into some very nice condos—I think I spotted my dream apartment there, but I’d better hope for the exchange rate to swing rather drastically in favor of the dollar in order to make that happen. We did, however, pay a visit to a 24-hour bakery, which served up the most delicious donut I’ve ever tasted in my life, as well as this sort of egg pizza. Thank you, Lonely Planet—I never would’ve tried that were it not for you.
During our orientation here, a coordinator delivered a stern message about the undesirable outcomes that result from leaving a backpack lying around anywhere. To paraphrase her words: “If someone sees it and notifies security—which you should do, if you can’t find the owner of the bag—then the bomb squad comes and blows it up. So don’t do it. It’s not fun.” It goes without saying that in some dark recess of everyone’s mind, the thought of getting a really, really cheap backpack, and leave it unnoticed somewhere was instantly born and filed away in the ‘things to do on a rainy day’ vault.
After an aborted trip to Masada on Thursday—long story—some friends and I were walking toward Ben Yehuda street, one of the main drags in the New City of Jerusalem, and the site of a truly world-class ice cream establishment, when we ran across two fellows from our program heading to the bus station and then on to Tel Aviv. We got to chatting a little bit, and then noticed, across the intersection, that a bus was pulled over, with police cars all around.
We asked these two if they knew what was going on, and they responded quite nonchalantly: “Oh, there is a bomb over there”. These guys are Turkish, and their English sometimes lacks important distinguishing details. After a double-take, of course, we realized that what they had meant to say was “There is a suspicious looking package over there”. The streets were cordoned off, with a police officer shouting at everyone who thought about crossing the street. And then, of course, we saw the robot:
It looked like one of those miniature tanks that one might find at a mid-level county fair. In its long maneuverable arm, it clasped what looked from a distance to be a small red package about the size of a cake box (evidently, it was found underneath a bus seat). Steered by remote control the entire way, the thing took it over against a wall, sort of rolled on top of the thing, and apparently blew it up. We didn’t hear or see a thing, except that on some sort of cue, everyone could cross the street again. The whole thing took about 20 minutes, and shut down in all directions one of the biggest intersections in the city. We walked for nearly a half-mile before the traffic seemed anything but bumper-to-bumper as a result.
Having now seen this, I think that secret desire has been extinguished, although I’m told that the Israeli police do this with suspicious cars as well—now that I would pay to see, as long as it was someone else’s car.
At this point, though, my only question is: Where can I get one of those robots? Maybe ResLife could cover it…can you really imagine a more fun way to clean up puke?
Probably my favorite thing about the student apartments here at Hebrew University is that I might have one of the best views in the entire city out my apartment window. My camera isn’t spectacular, but here’s a hint of it:
You can pretty clearly see the Dome of the Rock shooting up out of the Old City, and the dome of the Al-Aqsa Mosque to the right of it. As it turns out, though, getting up on the Temple Mount is quite the ordeal. It’s only open during non-prayer times, and since it’s guarded by the Israeli Police, it’s also closed on Saturday. Moreover, it closes at 2:00 p.m. for reasons I still haven’t been able to discern. But, after a week and a half, we were finally able to manage a visit up there.
Entering the mount itself was an interesting window into the fragile coexistence of religious authorities in this country. The Temple Mount, of course, was the site of the First and Second Temples, but since nobody is exactly sure where the temple itself was located, it is technically forbidden for Jews to set foot on the grounds, lest they stumble across the temple in an impure state. Thus, even though it’s one of the most fortified locations in the entire city, the hordes of Israeli Police sit just outside of the temple mount itself, while as one approaches the gate, a member of the Muslim administration authority stands and ensures that no-one enters the mount dressed in an immodest fashion.
I’ve studied both the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in a course on Islamic Art History, but absolutely nothing can compare to seeing them up close.. It sits on what is, actually, a pretty desolate place. The temple mount itself is barren, covered in well-worn stones below which likely sits a treasure trove of archaeological wonders. And out of nowhere arises a structure so grand, so detailed, it’s not hard to see why it evokes such reverence and even from those who understand little of the significance of what is inside. Each mosaic was done by hand, carved with such detail that it seems the work of an entire lifetime. The inside, I’m told (non-Muslims are not allowed inside), is even more spectacular, with vegetal patterns and kufic Qu’ranic script surrounding the rotunda over the rock itself. And while it has been rebuilt on several occasions, and re-gilded quite recently, it has existed on this very spot since the 7th century, and seen more wars fought around it than most could even imagine. Yet it, like so many sites in this city, seems to have a penchant for endurance. It towers over the Old City and the valley, quite literally above the fighting and enmity that have been the essence of this land for so long.
It’s had its close calls, of course. When Israel captured the Old City from Jordan during the Six Day War, there was a suggestion from a general or two that the IDF place explosives inside it and Al-Aqsa as a way of ending Arab claims to the mount. Thankfully, this proved to be an unpopular idea among the leadership at the time, as that war would likely be ongoing. And as I found out, the Temple Mount was closed to visitors for quite a while after Ariel Sharon visited the area in 2005, provoking such anger and violence that the site was shut down completely to non-Muslims.
On that note, I happened to have a conversation with a Palestinian who happened to be at the Dome during our visit. I was admiring a stone minbar (the rough equivalent of a pulpit in a Mosque) from Al-Aqsa that now sits outside, and after he was kind enough to translate some of the calligraphy for me, we got to chatting a bit. Truth be told, it was more or less a blatant pitch for me to convert to Islam—he took every opportunity to drop the name of some American he knew who had converted, and pointed me to websites where I could find their reasoning behind it. That said, he was very nice, and clearly more than a little knowlegable about the site and its history. But when I asked him about Sharon, he said something that made me literally shudder. Sharon, as you may know, suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2005, and since that time has been in a persistent vegetative state. To this, he replied, without apology: “This is too easy. He desecrated this place, to occupy Palestine and then to set foot here. I hope it’s torture for him—it’s not right that he should feel no pain”.
Perhaps it’s just the bubble in which I’ve lived at the university, but I don’t think I’ve heard that kind of pure hatred spoken aloud here thus far. It’s one thing to see the graffiti; it’s everywhere as you get closer to the old city. Things like “Gas the Arabs”, “Arabs=Dogs” or “Nuke Israel”—and those are the ones that aren’t written in Hebrew or Arabic. But to here it from the mouth of a person who, not ten seconds before, had been quite kind indeed, gives an unwelcome face to that sort of anger. We’d much rather, I think, consign that rhetoric to the nebulous realm of “extremists”, as though it represents some group of shady men in a smoke-filled room who sit aloof from the every day realities of the world. And that conception, I’m convinced, is to a large extent true. The streets aren’t crawling with people consumed by a violent anger, no matter how much CNN might suggest otherwise. But it’s very easy to see the people here as being not unlike the Dome of the Rock—making their way through life with whatever happiness can be gleaned and staying out of the way while the world goes to hell and back again at its feet. There, in the shadow of the Dome, that had never felt less the case.
It goes without saying that in Israel, security is something approaching a national obsession. The rules about this go far beyond the actual borders of the country, too. One of my friends here happened to fly El Al—consistently rated the world’s most secure airline, which is comforting since it also holds the distinction as the world’s most frequently targeted airline as well—and from the sound of things, it was quite the experience. At check-in, she was pulled out the line and questioned for an hour by El Al Security (they have their own ex-military security at every airport with an El Al counter), asking for documentation about exactly what she would be doing in Israel, background checks, the whole nine yards. Every plane also has armed guards posted at the cockpit door, in addition to the publicly acknowledged fact that every international flight has at least four armed plainclothes agents somewhere among the passengers. When my friend got to Jerusalem, she discovered that her bag had been opened—not by TSA, but by El Al. That’s right, they run the bags a second time through their own x-ray machines. As she discovered, her laptop was missing, and was delivered a day later with the explanation that the airline couldn’t figure out what it was on the x-ray, and so pulled it out and sent it on the next flight. On my Swiss Airlines flight, I also noticed that when we reached one hour to our scheduled landing time, the video screens would display speed, altitude, ETA, etc—but no maps of our current location, lest someone base a plot around being in a populated area.
What’s really incredible, though, is the security that is in place once one actually gets in country. I’m told that this has increasingly become the norm over the past several years, but it’s virtually impossible to enter any building in the New City without going through a security check. The next time you happen to go into a Walgreens, or any local supermarket, imagine what it would be like to have all of your bags searched, and occasionally be wanded and/or patted down by a security guard, and you have some approximation of what the simplest of errands is like here. After a while, you no longer have to think about it realize that the glances you get from guards when you’re carrying no bag at all are not, in fact, them checking you out. And God help you if you happen to forget a student ID…
There’s another interesting element to the security culture here, though, beyond metal dectectors. Not two hours of the plane, when I arrived in Jerusalem to register for the program, I attempted to go through the campus’ main security gate with my gigantic duffle bag containing a hiking back pack. The number of nervous looks I received—especially since I didn’t have an ID yet—was really astonishing, although perhaps more so given my jet-lagged state. As the guards went through my bags pretty thoroughly, one of them asked me in a thick Israeli accent: “Weep On?” I couldn’t understand her, until she made a stabbing motion with her fist, and I got it—she was asking me if I had a weapon. My intuition suggested that this was not the moment to respond “If I did, why on earth would I tell you about it?”
As it turns out, though, had I been Israeli (which, as should have been obvious, I was not) that would not have been an unreasonable question to ask. The threat of terrorism is so omnipresent here that the government subscribes to the idea that a well-armed populace is a safer populace, a theory that is easily put into practice by virtue of the compulsory military service laws. IDF personnel who on leave or reservists are encouraged to carry weapons around pretty much whenever they feel like it. On my first night in Jerusalem then, during an outing to a local shopping mall to buy necessities, I was started to see a couple of teenage girls strolling out of the Israeli equivalent of Victoria’s Secret, chatting eagerly, with M-16s over their shoulders. I still jump every time I happen to run into someone, going about normal teenager-esque things with an assault weapon dangling behind their backs. By all accounts, for all of its horrifying collateral damage the security fence has succeeded in bringing life in Jerusalem back to something approaching safety and normalcy. Still, it’s nothing short of heartbreaking that measures of this sort qualify as normal in a place like Israel.
