Israel
I wrote the following at the end of the summer. Figured I'd better post something on this blog, so this will have to suffice.
We arrived in Israel two weeks after the war started. We told our nephew Koby that despite everyone’s objections to our trip, “Hezbollah doesn’t make our travel plans.” We would avoid the north, and have Koby show us the rest of Israel through his eyes.
Koby, like so many Israeli teenagers, has extreme, right-wing views and has been arrested numerous times. At one point he was in jail on civil disobedience charges and put in a cell with a member of Hamas. Instead of fighting, the two agreed not only about the damage caused by western values on their cultures, but also that the Muslims and the Jews cannot co-exist.
They had a friendly discussion in which they completely agreed about the need to annihilate each other.
A leftist from Jaffa in the same cell interrupted their conversation to praise the value of coexistence. As Koby tells it, both he and the Hamas fellow told the leftist to shut up or be shut up.
Of course Koby took us to Masada, symbol of Jewish resistance. But the fortress proved itself as impregnable to Americans as it was to Romans. We got there just before ten, when they close the walking path because of the heat. I was longing to get close to that rocky desert terrain, so we braved the sun and started up the Snake Path.
Bad decision. The medic when he came to get me was appalled that they'd let me walk up so close to ten on a day of unusually high temperatures. But it was worth getting sick to meet the medic. When I asked if he minded walking up and down the mountain every day he laughed. “I walked to Israel from Sudan when I was five,” he said. “After that, Masada is nothing.”
We stopped at a truck stop on the way back to Jerusalem for a camel ride. A bus load of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men arrived the same time we did. They clustered around the camel as though it were a creature from Mars, snapping pictures of each other next to it.
In contrast, Koby and the Bedouin camel owner discussed camel care and together deplored the abandonment of the old ways by modern Arabs and Israelis. A camel, they agreed, should not be seen as exotic, but simply as a means of transportation.
We continued on from the truck stop, with Koby giving directions. Unfortunately, he wasn't paying close attention and we missed the turn to Jerusalem. Never mind, he said, we can go this way. (Said in the Israeli laissez-faire style, with a little hand wave and eyes half-closed, chin up and a little head nod.)
"This way" took us into Azariya, an Arab city under the Palestinian Authority. No problem, Koby assured us. Lots of Israelis come here to buy cheap cars and tax-free goods. (Our friends told us later that yes, lots of Israelis come to Azariya to buy things. And for every hundred that go in, one doesn't make it out.)
We passed through the commercial district and the street narrowed. We were starting to feel a little uneasy, especially with Koby's uncertain choices of the roads, when traffic slowed, then stopped. At least a dozen Arab men stood in the street.
One approached us. "Go back, go back!” he said. “Is not good for you here. I help you. Road closed. Go back.."
My husband, normally a drive-the-speed-limit kind of guy, got the hell out of there. Fast.
A few miles down the road Koby hit his head with his hand. "Of course!" he cried. "The wall! How could I forget?"
How, indeed? He’d been arrested for protesting the creation of the very wall that had closed the road. It will bisect Israel, and, as we discovered, already cuts Azariya off from East Jerusalem.
We Americans have no concept of what it means to have a hostile, armed enemy on our border. I mentioned the feeling of being in an armed camp to a friend. (Even the restaurants have security guards outside to search your bags.) He said people used to be optimistic: we'll try this, then we'll try that, and we'll figure out a solution. Now the feeling is grimmer. We did all these things and they're still killing us.
The last two weeks of our stay Koby went back to work, my husband went back to the U.S., and my daughters and I explored Israel on our own.
The passing of a little time had softened the fears and griefs of the war. Without that seething intensity clouding my vision, I fell in love with Israel all over again.
The beauty of the land is an obvious reason. Desert has an honesty that lush, green landscapes do not. The earth lies revealed in her bare form. You can see her bones in the stony outcrops, her spirit in the dusty soil. The sky stretches like an endless crown above the rare, tenacious plants who brave the waterless waste. Who cannot love such a landscape?
In the United States, we live with a high level of fear every day, wary of strangers as possible thieves, child molesters, rapists. We register our children’s finger prints with the police; the faces of missing children stare at us from milk cartons.
Contrast Israel: I met my friend Linda at a children’s activity center, where we wandered amid ruins of a Roman-era village and made pita bread over a fire. We were at the clay station when I realized if I didn’t leave immediately we’d miss our bus to Tekoa (they only run every two hours). But how to get Linda’s three clay-covered sons to the car that quickly? The woman running the station said it was fine to leave them playing with the clay; another woman with a child said she’d keep an eye on the two year old. So off we went.
As we raced to the car, Linda smiled. “Only in Israel, right? You wouldn’t do this in America, would you?”
“Leave my two year old with strangers like that? Not in a million years,” I answered.
Israelis love children. Years ago, I was struck by the scene of a woman boarding a bus with her baby. She was trying to balance baby and wallet to pay the driver, which wasn’t working, so without even asking permission she just handed the baby to a stranger sitting nearby. Two other people had stretched out their hands to help, too.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised at what happened when we crammed onto a crowded bus and got stuck standing on the stairs. The old man behind us started shouting at the people in the aisle to move back. Not unreasonable; he was pressed against the door. But I winced at his vehemence. Then I listened to what he was shouting. “Move back, there are children on the stairs here! It’s not nice, move back!”
Although the bus system is phenomenal, everyone “tramps” in Israel. To get from the settlement where we were to Jerusalem, you wait at the bus stop. Passing drivers stop and call out where they’re going. By the time the bus arrives, there’s not usually many people left to get on. To get home, you go to the “trumpiata” in Jerusalem and reverse the process. Teenagers, old ladies with grocery bags, Hasids with Talmuds clutched beneath their arm, soldiers with machine guns, mothers with children: everyone tramps. In America I wouldn’t dream of picking up a hitch hiker, much less one toting a loaded rifle.
Although Israelis have little energy left for environmental concerns (as a friend said, we’re just trying to survive, literally), some sustainable practices are part of the fabric of life. For example, I remember once needing broccoli out-of-season for a recipe. I scoured the markets and finally found a single limp stalk at the largest supermarket in Jerusalem (at an exorbitant price, of course). You don’t have to plan to eat seasonally and locally, it’s just the way things are.
As we said good-bye to Israel, I found a ray of hope in a conversation I had with a friend who lived on the West Bank. I expected more political polemic from him, but instead he told me about his Arabic contractor from Hebron, Ibram. Herzl said that given the choice between doing something fast and cheap, or doing it right, Ibram always chose to do it right. He’s an honorable man, Herzl said.
A traditional Muslim, Ibram has two wives. His biggest problem with this? Family events. “I don’t like to eat so much,” Ibram protested to Herzl. With two sets of in-laws and thirteen children, someone’s always celebrating something.
I could imagine the two men sitting together, eating the dates from Ibram’s tree that he often brought to share with Herzl, commiserating on the woes of relatives. Two family men living in the midst of violence, treating each other with respect and friendship.
And so our trip to Israel ended with a glimpse that beneath the hatred we are all humans together. Perhaps some day, this will be enough.
Copyright 2006 Linda Glaser