Time to Fly
Wow, what a day! It started out early saying goodbye to my wife and kids. Although my boys will miss me, they were a bit annoyed I was distracting them from their morning cartoons and breakfast.
My wife, Karen, is a trooper. She is slammed at work and I’ll be gone for 10 days. I’m sure she’ll be fine but will be happy to see me home. As I will be very happy to be home.
Flew from Chicago O’Hare to Newark, NJ Liberty Airport to meet my mom who flew in from Pittsburgh. We had a few hours and caught up a bit and were having a good time. Then the first sign of weirdness occurred.
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| Flight route from Newark Liberty Airport to Tel Aviv. |
Even though we are law-abiding, tax-paying U.S. Citizens (in my case lifelong and in my mom’s case – 50 years) with no criminal records or misdeeds of any kind on our record, we were asked to leave the gate area in Newark while they set up a new security check point at the gate itself. Then we all got in line and got searched and our luggage was searched then we had to go the desk and re-check in. I guess United Airlines and the state of Israel don’t trust the FAA, the U.S. Government and the fine folks at O’Hare that much. Whatever.
Flight was uneventful, although I didn’t sleep much. A guy next to me, let’s call him Marty, was fascinated that I was going into the West Bank and Ramallah. Although he communicated some empathy with the situation of my family members being oppressed by Israel for being Palestinian, he claimed the “security wall” and the lack of freedom and human rights for millions of Palestinians was needed because of the “bad 2 percent.” Not sure where he got his percentages from, but even if true, do you punish 98 percent of a population for the actions of a few? More on that later.
Cut to the chase — we landed in Israel and I was questioned for 2 hours for some reason. Ridiculous line of questioning that is designed to deter people like me from visiting again. When I finally was “freed”, I got my passport back, found my luggage and met my mom and our Palestinian driver (who has Israeli driving privileges) into the West Bank.
We went through a few Israeli checkpoints (on the West Bank side mind you) viewed the horrific “security wall” and saw several “settlements” (which are really military installations) that were connected by Israeli-only roads in a land that is supposed to be a Palestinian state some day. Driving into Ramallah, I had a sense of amazement of beauty of the landscape the wonderment of stepping into another great culture to get to know more. But I also had a sense of disgust as I really began to process that I was truly is an “open-air prison” controlled and regulated by and occupied by Israel.
