Fools Rush in Where Angels Fear to Tread

Or, That time we visited the West Bank…

I always thought I would write about this experience but I never did. I’m writing about it now as I reflect on this war in the Middle East and as I see all the marches to “Free Palestine;” the slaughter of 1400 Israelis that started the war somehow overlooked and in some circles celebrated!

Since October 7th, I have been heartbroken. Anti-antisemitism is at an all time high and I personally have felt the sting of it this past month. Comments on Facebook in particular have been vicious. I left a group for therapists. Therapists spewing anti-Semitic troupes! I like to think it is because people in the liberal circles I find myself in have good hearts and are misinformed thinking Israel is the oppressor. No other nation would be asked to not defend itself from a massacre. There is so much misinformation and propaganda! I have felt like I’m living in some weird alternate universe, where bad is good and good is bad and everything is reversed! All these folks speaking out to “FREE Palestine” and in support of HAMAS, do they even know what HAMAS stands for? Have they read the Charter of HAMAS? You can read it here I will just say, they don’t make a secret of their hatred of Jews and their goal of eliminating us.

In the meantime I want to tell you my story about the time I had the Chutzpah (some would say the foolishness,) to visit the West Bank.

Accepted to U of M’s prestigious Sexual Health Certificate Program

In 2015 I applied for and was accepted into University of Michigan’s Sexual Health Certificate Program, to begin in March of 2016. Upon news of my acceptance it dawned on me that I had not done anything to celebrate since I had gotten my Masters degree in 2014, and here I was ready to start school. Again! So I started looking at trips. I really wanted to go to Israel and had looked at a synagogue trip a couple of years earlier for $3000, but when I looked again it had gone up to $5000.00 and it was happening at a time that interfered with my classes at U of M.

Then my son found a special for just over $1000 and we were in! Since I had budgeted for a trip that was more than double that amount I asked him to accompany me.

It was a great trip! We had a nice couple of days in Tel Aviv and then a lot of rain and 50 degree weather. We saw snow in the desert and in Jerusalem! We visited Masada and Jaffa, a spa at the Dead Sea, the Western Wall, Old Jerusalem, and …the West Bank.

My son was not happy about that last choice.

“I don’t understand. Why would you book us to go to the West Bank?” He asked.

“We were in the neighborhood. I figured we had come all this way, why not see what all the fuss was about?” I replied glibly.

To be clear I, not my wise son, am the fool in this scenario.

The day we went was cold and rainy. At the border our Israeli tour guide left our bus, we proceeded into the West Bank where a Palestinian tour guide joined us. This was a secular tour group, most of the folks were Christian and I felt that my son and I would just blend in. He did not feel so assured. Parting words from our Israeli tour guide, as he departed from the bus were to hold on to our passports and not turn them over to anyone else under any circumstance.

The first thing I noticed in the West Bank was a Starbucks, only it wasn’t a Starbucks, it was a total ripoff of their logo with a slight variation of the name. The bus didn’t stop there. We visited Bethlehem and the Star of the Nazarene Church, the birthplace of Jesus. The church was under renovation and looked quite shabby. Everything did. While TelAviv was modern, bright, and welcoming the West Bank looked run down and ramshackle.

Before returning to Israel they made an unplanned stop for lunch.

This was the beginning of the most uncomfortable part of the trip. The group was asked if we wanted to stop for lunch and most of us said no but our tour guide said yes, so stop we did. There were only a couple of lunch offerings, we weren’t allowed to skip lunch and we had to pay in cash, then we were “herded” to a gift shop that contained nothing that I would want to buy. We returned to the bus after briefly wandering through the gift shop and the workers from the shop kept boarding the bus and insisting people to buy overpriced tote bags and the such.

It felt like a very uncomfortable high pressure situation. We avoided eye contact with them; kept our heads down and sat far enough back that we didn’t get accosted. Finally the bus pulled out. At the border again, the Palestinian guide left the bus. We crossed into Israel and Israeli solders boarded the bus to make sure we were all accounted for and that we had no extra passengers. There was collective sigh of relief and the whole bus broke out is applause and cheers for the solders.

This isn’t Disneyland

I am pretty sure we were the only Jews to join that excursion and even the Christians were uncomfortable. Our Israeli guide stepped back on board and said our evening festivities were canceled because of the rain. We appreciated the downtime to decompress. Like the tourist who backs of a cliff trying to take pictures, or who treats the very real dangers in nature like a day in Disneyland, I had put us in potential harms way that day. We were lucky.

On one other occasion we got turned around in Jerusalem and ended up in a shop in the Arabic part of town. They had cute T-shirts. The owner sized us up and we had a very uncomfortable exchange. We left without buying anything. I have never felt such contempt and hatred from someone for being recognized as a Jew. It felt dangerous and we backed out of that store. This also shattered my notion that we could just “blend in.” Had this incident happened first, there would have been no trip to the West Bank for us! It boggled my mind because I just graduated with a group of Muslim young women at Wayne State University a couple of years before and considered us all friends, or at least friendly. This was a confusing and jarring experience.

Governments and Politics: Palestinians are Oppressed by HAMAS

Let me be clear, I don’t agree with everything the Israeli government has done, especially under Netanyahu. But HAMAS is a terrorist organization and all my fellow Queer liberals supporting them need to be aware that HAMAS would kill you (and not in a nice humane way) in a heartbeat! To me “Free Palestine” means free Palestine FROM HAMAS!

The Palestinian casualties in Gaza are so high because HAMAS uses their citizens as shields rather than protecting them. They don’t value human life, except their own lives. They use their citizens as pawns. They take money for humanitarian aid and use it on weapons and building tunnels for their terrorist attackers. Unlike Israel they don’t build bomb shelters for their people. They take no responsibility for protecting their people.

I feel badly for the Palestinian people and at the same time I am aware that they have been weaponized. The humanitarian aid given to HAMAS for the people has gone to Military weapons, not to the people. The Palestinian people have indeed been oppressed, oppressed by their own leadership, HAMAS. Aid has been given but apparently no accountability has been in place to make sure the aid goes to improving the people’s lives. So people are kept poor and angry. They are taught to hate Jews and hate Israel.

This has created an impossible situation for Israel. HAMAS has been exceptionally good at spreading their propaganda. When I hear someone equating Israel with Nazi Germany I cringe. There is no genocide of Palestinians and if that is a goal (it’s not) the Israelis are incredibly bad at it, as the Palestinian population’s grown not dwindled. Israel is not occupied by Jews and it is not an apartheid state.

A Resource

But don’t just take my word for it. Some people have asked me for resources and I highly recommend “Israel: A simple guide to the most misunderstood country on earth,” by Noa Tishby. It is also available in audiobook format and it is an informative, interesting and entertaining read or listen!