Voice of Reason: I’m glad to be back in one piece
As I have recently learned, some lessons come at a very expensive price. I learned last week that despite my wishes to the contrary, I really don’t have that much control over my life and my surroundings.
As many of you may remember from a former column of mine, I am right now supposed to be in Israel, volunteering on a kibbutz. But present unrest, namely suicide bombings, have put on hold any ambitions I have of becoming a kibbutznik.
My trip to Israel began Easter Sunday as I left Nashville enroute to Tel Aviv, via Chicago, Toronto and Frankfurt, Germany. Upon arrival at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, I was half expecting be subjected to intense interrogation and a strip search by tough Israeli customs agents. Oddly enough, however, my passport was quickly stamped and I was waived through immigration.
My first encounter with Israeli life came just a few minutes later as I got on a bus that would take me into central Tel Aviv. Knowing public buses are prime targets for Palestinean suicide bombers, I was more than a little nervous as I stepped on board.
Cruising through town it didn’t take long to see Israel is the epitome of the term police state. There were soldiers with machine guns on seemingly every street and in front of every cafe and shopping center. I felt, at the same time, safer and more in danger.
The day after I arrived, I was set to arrive at the Kibbutz Program Center where I would be assigned the kibbutz on which would be volunteering. I was not told, however, the office was closed for the Jewish holiday of Passover and would not be open again until the holiday ended.
Angry, I walked back to the hostel and decided to check in with the U.S. Embassy which was only a few blocks away. The staff there did not mask their surprise at seeing a non-Jewish American in Israel at this time. The State Department had just issued an additional waring advising Americans not to visit the country. The embassy’s personnel politely suggested I leave as well.
As I had been planning and dreaming about this trip for months I was not about to give it up as soon as it had begun. Fine, they said, but come back in a day or two and check in.
The next day I did and their message took on an entirely new tone. “Mr. Stewart,” said one official, “get out of Israel.” No polite, “perhaps you should reconsider,” request was given this time. The situation, he said, is going to get much worse before it gets even the least bit better and all Americans need to “get the heck out of Dodge.”
I began to see his point later that day when, walking to get some falafel for lunch, I witnessed Israeli authorities take down an Arab man in a very violent scene in front of a cafe. People closer to the action said he was a suicide bomber. Who knows if that was the case or not, but I decided perhaps the embassy staff knew what they were talking about.
I then reluctantly called Air Canada’s office in Tel Aviv to change my reservations and was able to be booked on that night’s flight to Toronto via Paris.
A few hours later a mob gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy, only about five block from my hostel, and started to chant angrily. Maybe I was making the right decision in coming home after all, I thought.
Getting out of Israel, I found, proved much more difficult than getting in. I was questioned before even entering airport grounds while in my taxi and six more times in the airport before my plane left the ground. My bags were searched four times.
Nine time zones and 30 hours later I was back in McMinnville, where I had left only six days prior. I was exhausted.
I was also, and still am for that matter, very disappointed at having my big adventure cut so short. As I said earlier I have devoted a lot of planning as well as hard-earned money into this trip. But, I do know it is better to come home earlier, dejected and poorer, than not to come home at all or to come home in a body bag.
The short trip was an experience to be sure and it did provide me with one thing I had hoped it would: greater self-awareness.
(Will Stewart is a reporter for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191.)