Background
Life is balance. We all act within a globalized system of organized chaos. The pressures from these activities influence our lives (and identity) in profound ways. I arrived at Ben Gurion airport on the Jewish sabbath, Shabbat, in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was July 8, 2017. I was nervous to the point of shaking about spending a year in the Middle East.
The summer of 2016 was my first trip to Israel. I was not prepared for the Israeli security apparatus, a daily part of life in Israel. Growing up between Canada and the United States, I knew the government was at work behind the scenes to keep citizens safe, although it’s mostly hidden from view. In Israel, the security infrastructure is explicit. Police are militarized, and soldiers openly carry automatic weapons on-and-off duty.
I wasn’t thinking about this when I approached the Israeli customs and border authority in 2016 at the Tel Aviv airport. I figured my passport would be stamped quickly due to being American, and I’d be napping in Jerusalem before an evening of fun.
The Ministry of Interior in Tel Aviv occupy small booths that look like small kiosks. I smiled unexpectedly at the agent as I approached. My excitement about being in Israel was palpable. It was my first time. The border agent asked me the purpose of my visit, and I responded with a lengthy dialogue that could’ve been said in a sentence.
The Interview
Perhaps, that long speech was enough to single me out for additional screening. I’ll never know, but I was directed toward a holding room to await further questioning. It hadn’t hit me that I was in Israel. My adrenaline from the last 30 hours awake had begun to fade.
I was moved into a smaller room with no windows, a photo of the Dome of the Rock, and iconic Jerusalem scenes.
The Israeli interviewer was attractive. I couldn’t help myself. My flirtation was automatic. I didn’t make it past the small talk about airplane food before things took a sudden turn.
Questions came in rapid-fire succession.
What are you doing in Israel? Why are you here for two months? What terrorist organization are you supporting?
I was not prepared for this line of questioning. I had arrived to intern in East Jerusalem with an NGO called the Center for Democracy and Community Development. I answered each of the interviewer’s questions. I was nervous and a bad liar, so I provided more detail than was probably necessary. There was no time to think.
The interviewer didn’t wait either before asking the same question differently. Questions shifted to the personal. What does your mother do for a living? Where does she live? What’s her religion?
Standard questions for Israeli interviewers, I’m sure, and then the topic turned to my father.
“What does your father do for work?” she began.
“I’m not sure. I don’t know my father.” I responded truthfully.
Apparently, this answer wasn’t unacceptable as it was followed up with, “how could you not know your father?!”
Thinking back to my answer from 4-years ago, it was likely the stress of the moment that led me to explode with “because my mother was raped!” Honestly, I don’t remember the questions that followed.
I was sent back to the holding room. Two hours passed. Finally, another agent called me in for more questioning. The questions were the same as before. My answers remained the same. Except I was calm, measured, and deflated.
A half-hour later, I was granted a B/2 Tourist visa – a removable pass that allowed me to be in the country for 90 days.
I didn’t see the first interviewer again until I was back at the airport 2-months later, ready to leave the country. Again, I was separated for further questioning. I’d later discover that a yellow label with numbers identifying a perceived level of threat is placed on the passport’s backside. Before I had been allowed to board the plane back to the US, I had been compelled to submit to one final violation of privacy, a strip search.
I returned to Oregon without my luggage. Two days later, I found evidence in my luggage of Israeli screening as gifts had been opened and contents haphazardly crammed back into my bag.
Much of what I’ve described is standard practice by the Israeli government. I am not the only one to have endured these screening measures. Plenty of cases have been documented by foreign nationals volunteering in Israel and the Palestinian territories, humanitarian aid relief workers, and visitors with Arab or Palestinian connections. Stories of Israeli treatment are far worse than mine. But it didn’t stop me from crying on the plane ride back to Oregon. I felt guilty for being lucky enough to go home.
Here for a year…
This was my frame as I approached the Israeli border agent in 2017. He seemed gigantic inside the tiny kiosk in Tel Aviv. I had prepared mentally for every possible question. I refrained from sending emails with the terms “Gaza,” “Palestine,” “West Bank,” or engaged in discussions related to human rights.
My abundance of caution was partly the result of past experience. Still, I also had anxiety about an invitation to study Arabic at the Islamic University of Gaza, with no return ticket booked back to the United States. I mitigated these concerns by selectively choosing the day of travel and ensuring a clean-cut appearance traveling business-casual. I also brought a letter from my graduate program at the University of Oregon detailing the trip’s academic nature.
After a few minutes of conferring with a supervisor, the Israeli border agent turned back to me with a surprising question. Have you ever entered Israel before? Without missing a beat, I admitted to arriving the previous year on an American passport before tucking my Canadian passport back into my breast pocket and wishing the agent a “Shabbat Shalom” and heading into the terminal to retrieve my luggage, as he waved me on.
