An unclear welcome to a divided land

This is part one of a three-part series. During winter break, Assistant Opinions Editor Elham… This is part one of a three-part series. During winter break, Assistant Opinions Editor Elham Khatami, along with nine other college newspaper editors from across the country, traveled to Poland and Israel as part of the Anti-Defamation League’s Campus Editors Mission. This is part one of a three-part series. During winter break, Assistant Opinions Editor Elham Khatami, along with nine other college newspaper editors from across the country, traveled to Poland and Israel as part of the Anti-Defamation League’s Campus Editors Mission.

On the plane ride to Tel Aviv, I sat in my seat, legs crossed and arms folded across my chest, wide awake with worry. It’s not every day, I’m sure, that an Iranian-American Muslim who happens to have the same last name as the former president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, visits Israel. But that day, that someone was me.

We arrived at Ben Gurion Airport at 3:30 in the morning, and my group and I made our way to security. One by one, my fellow group members – made up of two Jewish students, one atheist, five Christians and one Indian-born Hindu – made it past passport control, each person spending no more than a minute or two at the counter.

“This is going to be simple,” I thought, relaxing a little. When it was my turn, I handed my American passport to the young woman behind the counter and asked, “Is it OK if you don’t stamp it?”

She looked up at me and frowned slightly, “Why don’t you want it stamped?”

“I have family in Iran who I visit every few years. And I have an Iranian passport, but I want to be on the safe side,” I said nervously.

She studied my face carefully, looking from me to my picture on the passport for what seemed like an eternity. “Why are you here?” she asked. I explained that I had been chosen by the Anti-Defamation League to study the region. She asked me where I was born, my father’s name, my grandfather’s name, where I live, what I do and where I attend school.

Finally, she asked, eyebrows raised, “What is your religion?” “Muslim,” I said. Without hesitation, the woman grabbed her walkie-talkie and said something in Hebrew. Within seconds, a security guard approached me, took my passport from the woman and led me to a waiting room where he instructed me to stay. Welcome to Israel.

Nearly 30 minutes passed and a security officer walked in and asked me to come to her office for questioning. I followed her nervously, hoping I wouldn’t seem suspicious, and smiled so much my face hurt. For 20 minutes, she asked me everything from where my parents were born to what I was studying at school. She was polite and calm, slowly typing my answers into her computer. I answered all of her questions, and she sent me back to the waiting room.

Half an hour later, another security officer took me to her office and, for another 20 minutes, asked me the same questions over again, logging all my answers into another computer. She joked and laughed with me, perhaps in an attempt to make me feel more comfortable. But I was no longer worried, just tired and annoyed, knowing that my group was probably waiting for me. When I asked her why I was being questioned, she said, “Just standard security procedure.”

I was not surprised. Israel has been a focal point for terrorism and violence in the Middle East since its creation 60 years ago. And the high security standards at Ben Gurion Airport have made it one of the safest airports in the world. I did not deserve to be detained, but I certainly expected it. Not even the pristine American eagle on my passport could help me. But it wasn’t until I walked back into the waiting room that I realized just how tight Israeli security is. Sitting in a seat across from me, dressed in jeans and an orange sweatshirt, black Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses resting on his head was Shahrum K – a famous Iranian pop singer, banned from performing in Iran for not singing pro-revolutionary songs.

Israeli security had detained the Justin Timberlake of Iran, the day before his concert in Tel Aviv, and placed him right smack dab in front of me. To make a long story short, I freaked out, asked the security guard to take a picture of me and Shahrum, and we bonded over our mutual circumstances. I was eventually released two and a half hours later at 6 a.m. in a haze of starstruck euphoria, reflecting on what had happened as a piece of good fortune.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” one of our group leaders told me when I met the rest of my group in the airport. “It’s racial profiling,” he said, and then, attempting to justify it, said “but racial profiling saved this country from terrorism.”

Maybe so, but it’s also reflective of the way Arabs and Muslims are alienated in Israel. One of the most important things I realized during my trip was that Israel is a “normal” country – that life goes on in Israel quite unlike how I expected it to. While Israel was and still is a country in the midst of war, the image that goes along with the word “war” is not always mirrored in the everyday lives of its people. I was shocked to learn that many Israelis don’t live their everyday lives with the conflict on the brain. But I also discovered that many Arabs and Muslims in Israel don’t seem to be part of this normal life. They are removed from it, whether it is because of anti-Arab policies in the Knesset, disparities in the living conditions between Arabs and Jews or the growing prevalence of racism against Arabs, as evidenced by recent Israeli public opinion polls.

In Israel, these Arabs seem to be outsiders for whom the conflict is persistent and eternally relevant – something I’ll address in greater detail in my upcoming columns.

E-mail Elham at elk23@pitt.edu.