I was in Bethlehem with four White friends, and by White I mean Caucasian American. We were greeted at the House of Peace Hostel by an elderly couple who welcomed us into their “prison of air.†Paul, their son, escorted us around town to make sure we did not get lost or hassled.
At dinner that night, after Paul had showed us all of Bethlehem, my friends were talking about the appalling conditions they saw–the ugly wall and dilapidated “refugee camp.” They wondered how Israel could treat such hospitable people this way. Then my Christian friends began recounting the way they had been treated by El Al, the Israeli airline. Out of four hundred passengers on the flight they were the only ones detained by security. For over an hour they were questioned, asked to open their luggage, and then escorted to the plane. In my friends’ eyes, Israel is not only racist against Palestinians but Christians, too.
What do you think happens to me every single time I board a flight in the U.S? I blurted out. I get padded down and my luggage gets searched. So what? Then Paul asked me if I know why that is. Because I’m brown, I snapped. Yeah, he said, you look like us.
You think you were treated like a criminal? How do you think I feel when I get pulled over in a White neighborhood and given a ticket for a busted tail light, when my tail light works fine? Or my friend, Scott Duncan, when he is pulled over in his own neighborhood and questioned as to why he’s there? There are no walls like this one in America, but there are gated communities to keep us out. There is no official check-point, but we are pulled over and questioned all the same.
Really? they asked in genuine shock. Really? How dare you be surprised by how we are treated. Your heart bleeds for the Palestinians on the far side of world, and you don’t even know what is happening in your own country. It’s easy to point out someone else’s flaws and to tell Israel how they should treat people, but it’s a lot harder to look at yourself and change your prejudice and discrimination.
You think this occupation by Israel is so awful and unfair? Did you notice the police officers in the street were not Israeli, but soldiers of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, PLO? You think that “refugee camp” with the renowned dance group and the best women’s basketball team in their conference was so ugly and run down? Go to any major American city, take a walk in the ghettos of poor minorities, and explain to me the difference in what you see. Palestinians cross the wall everyday to attend university and go to work. Ask American minorities about the opportunities they have to move out of those ghettos and explain the difference between that and this “prison of air.”
Did you stop to ask yourself why the graffiti on the wall is in English and not Arabic? Because they know it cuts down on the number of terrorist attacks against Israel, and they know it’s justified.
I know there are worse places in the West Bank, but Bethlehem is what appalled my friends. The Palestinians are treated unfairly and deserve better, but the situation is not as bad as they want you to think. Bring a poor, inner-city minority to assess the situation, and you will get a very different response than you will from middle-class, White kids from the Midwest.
It is insulting to see my White friends appalled at the same conditions my friends back home live in. I do not come from the ghetto, but I’m not blind to the world I live in. I have friends outside of my socioeconomic class and race. If you don’t know what is going on in your own country, either you are choosing to stay ignorant or you are racist and don’t care. I don’t fear Arabs with keffiyehs, I fear White people with keffiyehs.
Mario Enrique Uriarte is a Masa participant in the Overseas Student Program at Ben-Gurion University, one of Masa Israel’s 160 programs.
