A Gentileman And A Scholar

Essentially what Jerusalem has been like for me.

Border Crossing To Bethlehem

The police put out warnings of an imminent terror attack in Jerusalem around 8pm tonight. Now every time I see a bus go by I find myself slipping behind a wall or column or anything substantial, just in case that’s the one that will blow up. There’s always a bus in sight, so I’ve been doing a lot of slinking.

I went south to Bethlehem this afternoon with another American that I met here, Matt. We took a bus from East Jerusalem. The checkpoint was after the Green Line, at the Barrier. 15-foot tall concrete blocks were erratically spaced between the two directions of traffic on the way to the checkpoint; Matt said he’d heard they were there to make it harder for snipers to fire on the road. Above them, on the West Bank side of the road, three-story concrete pillars lined the hill. They bent down towards the road in a strange gesture that seemed like a protective embrace, like the backstop behind home plate.

At the checkpoint, two soldiers checked everyone’s papers. The covers of our American passports were enough to make them lose interest in us. 

After three weeks in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Bethlehem seemed incredibly clean. Like everywhere else, the people were nice. Matt, knowing a bit of Arabic and being incredibly outgoing, made friends at a rate of about 1.5/hr.

We went to the Church of the Nativity. The entrance to the church was a stone hole about 4 feet high. The inside was Byzantine, and underneath the altar was a small room with a 14-point silver star marking a spot that has something to do with Jesus’ birth. I’m not clear if it’s where he was conceived, or where he came screaming and bloody out of Mary’s vagina, or if it’s where he was placed on a scale and weighed. 

After a few hours in Bethlehem, Matt and I were tired and so we decided to catch a bus back to Jerusalem. The bus we needed had stopped running, but a driver told us we could walk to the checkpoint and catch a bus on the other side of the Barrier. We walked a few kilometers down the road and saw the Barrier: over 20 feet tall, with a short chain link fence on the top, floodlights and cameras at periodic intervals, and 30 foot high round guard towers at corners and every 100 feet or so. 

We made it to the checkpoint, which turned out to be for cars only. But once again, the fact the we had American passports seemed to make everyone not care. While cars were being searched and people interrogated, the soldier waved us down to the border crossing. It was inside a building with a labyrinth of turnstiles and lines. Matt asked the man in front of us how often he came through and how long he had to wait. “Every day, and two hours in the night”.

“And how long is the wait in the morning?”

“Not long. I come at 4 in the morning. Otherwise it is too long.”

It was slow when we were there, and it only took us 20 minutes to get through. Again, the border guards didn’t bother to look at our passports and waved us through. They seemed bored, making animal noises over the loudspeaker, maybe to amuse a kid we couldn’t see or just to amuse themselves. 

Jerusalem Pride

I was in Jerusalem for a week, where I tripped on a street sign laying on the ground while looking at the Mandatory period architecture a few days ago. It gouged a chunk out of my foot and I had to get a tetanus booster because these streets are dirty. Now I’m sitting at the hostel in Tel Aviv, waiting for Shabbat to leave so that the pharmacies will open and I can clean the wound before traipsing around in sandals.

Ayana, her brother Omri, and I went to Jerusalem pride on Thursday. It was small but good. It was timed to take place two years after the shooting at a gay youth center in Tel Aviv. The Jerusalem Pride marches in the past have seen violence; fortunately there wasn’t any this time, but we did get stink bombs thrown on us from the roof of a four story building. Some people next to me got hit directly, I got a bit on my foot. There were so many police, riot police, and soldiers that the people throwing them could only throw a few before the the police and soldiers started chasing them. The news the next day said that an ultra-Orthodox man was arrested for it.

Every driveway and every walkway leading to a door of a house was guarded by a soldier with an M-16, and they were facing the doors, not the parade. It took a few minutes before I realized that they were waiting for someone to rush out of a house or a corner to attack the parade. It felt strange to be guarded by soldiers, I think that’s the first time that’s ever happened to me.

We were joined by people from the housing protest (I guess the rent is too damn high in Israel, but I don’t know much about it) and the doctor’s strike (again something I don’t know a lot about). The best sign there was held by a guy who seemed like one of the pride organizers, blending the demands of pride and the housing protests into one:

It says, “There are gays that live in the closet because they don’t have money for an apartment”.

I can’t tell if I’m sweating or if the humidity is coalescing onto my skin.

-bp

Apparently you can’t put your feet up on the backs of chairs in the gallery of the Knesset.

Today was the first day I really tried to speak to an Israeli in Hebrew. It went so well that he spoke back to me in Hebrew instead of reading my American accent. Then came two minutes of me trying to understand what he was saying. I had asked him if the 9 bus stopped at the Knesset (Israeli Parliament). He said that it did, but as part of the countrywide housing protests, demonstrators had shut it down earlier in the morning (“hafganah” is the word for demonstration that tripped me up that I really should have already known, considering how many protests there are). I said ok and started to walk away and then realized that maybe a protest over the cost of housing might be more interesting than the Israeli equivalent of live-action CSPAN.

I walked to the Knesset (if you ever go to Jerusalem, the 9 doesn’t seem to run very often). There was no protest when I got there, which was only slightly disappointing, because I was really in the mood for some hot parliamentary action. The entry to watch the session was at 4pm, and I got there at 3:39. The guard at the door told me I had to wait until exactly 4pm, and so I crossed the street to a small plaza. There was a largeish metal sculpture there of a menorah with some figures and stuff on it. I didn’t really pay attention, but everyone else seemed to be very interested in it. Then came a minor victory.

I meant to ask the man sitting next to me if there was a story depicted on the menorah. Apparently I asked if there was a story about the menorah. Either way he corrected me and I got the information I needed, but here’s the clincher: he was French and he responded in Hebrew. Which means I got a Frenchman to talk to me in a language other than English. 

At 4pm, we lined up amassed in front of the door (Israelis don’t do lines). The security/bureaucracy to get in seemed similar to an airport but reversed: first some kind of paperwork done by people in cubicles for each individual, and then security with metal detectors and x-ray machines. I was the only American there, which apparently meant that I got to cut past everyone else and not go through the rule of the desk. I don’t know why it happened but it felt great. Security was lighter than at the Central Jerusalem Bus Station. There, we went through tighter security than an airport: every bag was thoroughly inspected by hand, probably because of the bus bombing in Jerusalem a few months ago. 

When I got in, the foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman had the floor. Here’s a nice hit piece on him for those who don’t know: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtuKO06RAqo

I’m sure he was saying something historical. I just sent an email to the parliamentarian asking for the minutes from today. Maybe it’ll have been something good. We’ll see. 

obligatory post

writing is hard i don’t update as much as i should how can i really write about this foreign country it will sound the same as all other second grade travel writing won’t i just be perpetuating orientalist discourse who even wants to read this etc. 

now that that bullshit’s out of the way i’ll never mention it again.