I wake at zero-five hundred and usually take about a half hour to get ready for the day before making myself a cup of powerful coffee (which we in Israel simply call ‘mud’) and reading a few headlines off the Jerusalem Post website. This particular morning an article entitled ‘Israeli Arab Planned Attacks’ catches my eye.
Apparently, a certain Basel Mahajneh, a 19-year-old from the Israeli Arab village of Umm el-Fahm in Wadi Ara, admitted to plotting a suicide bombing for Hamas before his arrest last month. It seems he was going to blow up bus number 842 running from Afula to Tel Aviv. My stomach turns and I discard the rest of my coffee before setting out for the day.
I walk about a half mile before hitching a ride to the main highway that runs through the heart of the Jezreel Valley. I set my bag down and watch the sun come up over Mount Tabor which looms over the city of Afula. The prophetess Deborah and her general Barak gathered the combined Israelite forces there 3,200 years ago to do battle with the Philistines based in the city of Haroshet HaGoiim, which is near today’s village of Um el-Fahm in Wadi Ara. The battle took place ‘by the waters of Megiddo’ and, to make a long story short, we won.
The number 842 bus comes barreling down the highway and I flag it down. The armed security guard gets off first, gives me a quick once over look and says ‘Good morning’ with a smile. I get on the bus heading toward Megiddo Junction. I take out some tests to grade – a group of American high school students has (finally) come to study at a prestigious Israel program. I see the ancient city of Megiddo rising at the point where the valley blends in with the rolling green hills.
The ancient tel looms over the earliest highways that converge on the junction. This has been the crossroads between the empires in Egypt and Mesopotamia running north-south and the spice routes of the far east to the Mediterranean ports running east-west for at least 5,000 years. We pass a makeshift memorial to the victims of the number 842 suicide-bombing that took place here two years ago, and then the bus comes to the mountain pass between the Maneshe Hills and Samarian Mountains, into a gorge on the ancient road that runs along the seasonal riverbed called Wadi Ara.
As we approach the first Arab village, the five or six people on the bus, all Jews, rouse themselves from their morning slumber and begin to stare at the door. The security guard gets off the bus with a changed demeanor. His face is cold and professional, and he looks sharply at everyone sitting at the stop. He holds his hand on his side near his weapon, speaking into the microphone attached to an earpiece.
The Arabs do not get on the bus right away. They first must answer questions, and if those aren’t answered sufficiently their belongings and bodies are searched. Only then are they allowed on the bus. I am disgusted. I see the angst in their faces. They mumble under their breath. I know what they are saying as they look down, avoiding eye contact and sitting in the very front of the bus huddled together away from the Jews who are spread out.
I’m disgusted – not by them but with myself. I hate myself for abiding this racial profiling, but at the same time I am thankful that I can finally take the bus with some sort of security apparatus in place. I ask myself why Jews and Arabs aren’t both subjugated to the same scrutiny. I strain my brain to think of the last time a Jew blew himself up on a bus filled with civilians and I immediately know the answer: never.
I still cringe at the sight of it, though. I cringe for the people being searched because of their ethnicity and I cringe because their brethren have made me accept these horrible circumstances. Most of all I cringe because I know that many of the residents here in Wadi Ara support the murder of Jewish civilians at the hands of murderous savages.
Terror is not the way to peace. Civil disobedience, yes. Strikes and protests, maybe. International protests, perhaps. Negotiations, possibly. But the intentional targeting and killing of babies, of women and children, is definitely not the way. So I accept this violation of the Arab passengers, and I will continue to accept it until my right to live as a Jew in a Jewish nation is accepted, not just temporarily tolerated.
As we leave Wadi Ara and emerge in the Sharon plain along the Mediterranean Sea, we pass many Jewish towns and villages, picking up passengers along the way. We stop in Netanya and four female soldiers get on the bus – four close friends, it seems. They are smiling and laughing, talking about their weekend, their boyfriends, chewing gum and blowing bubbles just like any other teenagers would do. They speak fluent Hebrew, but their accents are different.
Two of them are tall and thin, blond-haired and blue-eyed – obviously Russian immigrants. Another is either Ethiopian or her parents are immigrants from Ethiopia. The fourth is a sabra, long black hair tied back in elastic, fair in complexion with dark brown eyes.
Four Hebrew-speaking soldiers from the four corners of the earth, with different cultures, backgrounds and characteristics. I look at them and smile as I come to the realization that we Jews of Israel are not the racist monsters I read about in The New York Times. We Israelis are striving for a balance between ideas, peoples and forces beyond our control, and when we find that right balance we will continue with our efforts to create a country that surely will be a light unto the nations.
I turn my attention to my students’ papers on Theodore Herzl and Zionism, wondering whether these young people have any new ideas on how to achieve this noble goal.
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