“Are you crazy? Going to Israel now?”
That’s what our friends said after my husband, Gene, and I signed up for a three-week volunteer program in June. We went. It was not crazy.
Since Sept. 11, however, some of our volunteer memories have taken on deeper, ironic meanings.
We arrived at the Tel Aviv airport in the eighth month of the intifada. Ariela, a young soldier holding a Volunteer for Israel sign, greeted us and a few other travel-weary volunteers. She escorted us by bus to our assignment site, an army base, where we were shown to our barracks, assigned uniforms, and told the schedule: Sunday through Thursday, work; evenings, presentations or free time; weekends, free time. There were also a number of two-day excursions. We got general advice (drink lots of water, use sunscreen, wear a hat.)
On previous Israel trips, I was a tourist. As a volunteer, I glimpsed a different dimension of Israeli life. For three weeks we ate, worked, and got acquainted with soldiers and civilian employees — sabras as well as immigrants mostly from the United States, Russia and France. We met volunteers — young and old, Jewish and non-Jewish — from New Zealand, South Africa, Belgium, Holland, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, and Iowa. (Malka, 84, was on volunteer stint #18!).
We willingly helped wherever needed — outdoors, indoors, in the kitchen, in warehouses or factories. With my mediocre Hebrew, I even helped in an office, assembling booklets for soldiers.
During our weekend travels in Israel, we volunteers received warm welcomes. A Tel Aviv optician, after repairing my glasses, refused payment. A Haifa taxi driver refused too. A Rishon LeZion falafel shop owner beamed, “It’s good seeing some brothers come now.” A Jerusalem merchant, handing us pistachio nuts and cold drinks, smiled, “Thank you for coming. It warms our hearts. Especially now.”
We took buses to visit friends and family. In spite of grief and anger at terrorist attacks and the disastrous drop in tourism, Israelis were going on — working, shopping, going to cafes, cinema, beach, playing paddleball on the sand. Like them, we too determined to put aside twinges of insecurity, and enjoyed our meetings, tours, and many conversations
After Sept. 11, however, I was surprised to find myself replaying comments from certain people, remembering their words with a clarity and irony I was totally unaware of the first time around.
In Tel Aviv, for example, cousin Danny drove us past the still-burning site of the disco suicide bombing that killed 21 teens and wounded 100 others. “Even with terrorists,” he sighed deeply, “Israel is probably still safer than New York.” That was three months before the Twin Towers.
Walking along the Herzliya beach, I hardly heard my Moroccan-born friend Marguerite when she chided, “You Americans just don’t understand the Middle East.” She was right.
At a cafe overlooking the blue-green Mediterranean, Avi asked, “So, what would you Americans do if you were afraid to take your family out to a restaurant?”
Danny, a former Peace Now-nik, complained that Israelis were too optimistic. “We wanted peace so much we foolishly believed our dreams…in spite of the terrorism Arafat encourages.”
At my friend Tzvia’s house, I recall watching a pro-Arab report on BBC-TV. “Settlements? Jerusalem? Refugees?” she screamed in frustration. “Everything is negotiable! — except our right to exist!” And she slammed the TV off.
On balmy, starry evenings at the army base, we bought ice cream at the PX and chatted with soldiers –18- and 19-year-old boys and girls. They would rather be students than soldiers, they said. But they were armed to defend their country. I thought of their Palestinian counterparts, indoctrinated to hate and destroy Israel, and also about the carefree, same-age Americans.
After we returned home from Israel, I felt sheltered, too lucky, and guilty. It seemed unfair that we Americans don’t fear riding a bus, can’t grasp the concept of suicide bombers, don’t worry about terrorists, don’t compulsively listen to newscasts.
That was before Sept. 11.
On Sept. 12, TV scenes of dancing Palestinians reminded me of a Jerusalem Post story I had read in Israel after the disco bombing. In one photo, weeping Israelis grieved as William Burns, U.S. assistant secretary of state, placed a memorial wreath at the disco site. In the second picture, rejoicing Hamas activists waved pictures of the disco suicide bomber, and quoted the bomber’s proud father saying he hoped his other sons would also “fulfill Prophet Mohammed’s wishes by killing Jews.”
Peaceful, calm California life suddenly had something in common with life in Israel.
My Volunteers for Israel colleagues and I, while working at various tasks, sometimes pondered whether we were getting more out of volunteering than we were giving. But then, during our final week, my group placed the last, newly painted tank part into a big forklift container, and our Israeli foreman snapped a photo of us. Suddenly, a flood of emotion hit me. I realized that some time, some place, an Israeli soldier might urgently need one of those parts and he or she would never know what anonymous hands helped prepare it. In that misty-eyed moment I understood that volunteers — in addition to mutual morale-boosting — really do matter.
At our farewell ceremony, the Sar-El leaders thanked us for our “love and loyalty for Israel” and “for staying around in times when it’s difficult and sometimes unbearable.”