This is the second post of a series. To read the first post, click here.
The next morning we walked passed the synagogue on our way to the main boulevard. It was an impressive cement building with a giant Magen David centered above the entrance, which had two Greek columns on either side. The temple was sealed behind a chain link fence with a state policeman standing guard behind a bulletproof shield.
Walking down the main boulevard felt like any other big city. More interesting than the shops or the architecture were the people. Men walked with interlocked arms. Male couples were holding hands while wearing designer jeans and skin tight shirts. We thought we had found the Islamic gay paradise. Even in San Francisco you don’t see so many gay couples being openly affectionate outside of the Castro. Nearly all of the women were dressed in traditional hijabs and several were wearing the complete burqa.
In Cairo, there were a ton of book stores and almost every street corner had a magazine stand. Some of these places didn’t even have a stand, they simply laid their books on a blanket on the sidewalk. One store had a section of “great leaders” containing biographies on Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi and Hitler. Our favorite game became find-the-Hitler-book. There wasn’t a single books store or magazine stand that failed us.
That night, I found myself alone in the room when a skinny Chinese guy with black rimmed glasses, Dantes Leung from Hong Kong, walked in and sat on the bed across from me. He had graduated with his first degree about four months earlier and had been traveling the Mediterranean ever since. He was eager to introduce himself and swap travel stories. I told him I was on vacation from school in Be’er-Sheva, Israel. He asked if that was inside or outside our 1948 borders. I told him it is part of Israel. (The real answer is no; Be’er-Sheva was not part of Israel in the 1947 partition plan). Next he wanted to know why we weren’t happy with the original partition plan, a proposal, he claimed, we received because the world felt sorry for us after WWII.
I explained that the war created a Jewish refugee problem that no country wanted to deal with, and that both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. supported Israel’s existence hoping Israel would be their political and strategic ally in the Middle East. I explained about the violent revolts of the Palestinians against the Jews of that area in 1920 and 1921, the riots against the Jews from 1936-39, and the attempted invasion by the surrounding Arab states in 1947, before Israel was even a recognized state.
Dantes then wanted to know why we think those old arguments give us the right to discriminate against the Arabs today and to hassle him like he’s a terrorist when he came to Israel as an ordinary tourist. He told me he was hassled coming in and going out of the country. He believes he was purposefully misled into buying a visa he did not need because the state wanted his money. He told me he spoke with Arab-Israelis about how they are treated and he was appalled at what they told him. I told him he has to understand that the metropolitan area of Cairo has 17.8 million people—Muslims—to say nothing of the rest of Egypt or the other Islamic nations surrounding Israel, who openly refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. Israel’s population is 7.4 million. The truth, as I see it, is that Israel is a tiny country scared out of its mind.
I don’t mean to give the impression that Dantes was hostile or even rude. I would characterize him as pissed off, but genuinely willing to listen. I think, and hope, we both walked away having learned a little something.
The next day Rob, Hannah and I decided it was best to experience the pyramids of Giza with Elana and Rosanna—more friends of ours from Israel, who would join us shortly—so we headed north to Alexandria.
Mario Enrique Uriarte is a Masa participant studying at Ben-Gurion University in the Overseas Student Program, one of Masa Israel‘s 160 programs.
