go down, moses

The Grinch who stole my Christmas at the border crossing was the only one I met over the course of my four-day stay in the Israel-occupied West Bank.

The rest of the armed soldiers were amiable direction-givers. They were alternately bashful or jocular about their faulty English. When we opined about the dangerous contents of our bags or their military presence at every juncture, they seemed to appreciate sarcasm.

If the male soldiers expressed a sort of faint interest in us, the female soldiers did the same for the Arab men — only what men got was expressly negative attention.

On the cobblestone roads of Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers — often young and female — regularly stopped Arab passersby — always male, often old — and demanded Israeli-issued Jerusalem IDs. If the men were, like N, infiltrators, they were in trouble.

We knew we were flying under the radar. We were girls who, in the eyes of the occupation, could do no harm.

And, once, we lied.

We were going to leave Jerusalem that day and N knew she might never be permitted reentry. We wanted to see Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock one more time.

It was dawn, and there we were, backpacks, cameras and all. Three soldiers idly shifted their feet while two sat at a foldable table outside the main gate. An Arab Israeli was among them. They all turned to us, curious and a little relieved, as if we were among the highlights of a monotonous morning shift.

In Arabic, they asked us where we were from. In English, we told them the US. They nudged forward the best English speaker among them, then interestedly watched our exchange. We played up our effusive touristy apolitical American personas. Did we have our passports? We had anticipated this question. I pulled out my passport, which was kosher. N regretted that hers was at the hotel where we’d stayed — a manifold lie. They let the passport glide without so much as a glance. The Israeli soldiers seemed eager to chat and the Arab in uniform made conversational advances, so we made a quick but courteous retreat, and the name of the Noble Sanctuary acquired a new shade of meaning.

We had been carried through that security point on the wings of Americanhood and girl-privilege. We had avoided another potentially perilous fall (from Israel’s good graces).

And that is just the problem.

We were lucky it was morning. We were lucky they were bored. We were lucky we were young women. We were lucky in so many ways, but the implementation of justice shouldn’t depend on time of day.

The soldiers I met were mostly friendly and, I know, it serves Israel’s public relations and internal safety to have it so. But then again, I hadn’t raised a voice, let alone a fist against Israeli hegemony. I was there quiet and meek as a sheep, and they were happy to herd me along.

At the King Hussein / Allenby Border Crossing, on my way back from the Occupied West Bank, there was a young Israeli soldier with close-cropped hair checking passports and another Israeli soldier framed in a tinted-window booth. Like a clerk at an In-N-Out window, she smiled out and made funny faces at the children who hopped alongside their parents.

Her black hair was pulled back into a loose pony tail. She leaned forward on her elbows. With her right hand she waved us forward. In her other hand, she held a firearm, almost entirely out of view.

She smiled at me, a smile not unlike the one a slave might have seen from a kind mistress. A smile that, no matter how broad, cannot apologize for a downright racist institution.

That smile would disappear, I knew, if any slave made a quick, menacing movement or if the master sensed the beginnings of a slave revolt. Too swiftly, the gun would emerge, would be aimed, would fire, and no one would have a right to ask why. These would be the natural dealings between master and slave. All in the interest of the plantation and its owners — nay, in the interest of the slaves themselves, for what, pray, would the slaves do without their benevolent masters?