Guns and no roses

On my last morning in Tel Aviv, I went for a swim. I was staying at a Mediterranean resort hotel, after all. The hotel fronts one of those raked sandy beaches with chairs and umbrellas, and the water was warm, if not exactly clean. I counted 6 military aircraft flying overhead in the 15 minutes I spent in the water.

Deciding to travel to Jerusalem by bus, I spent a fair amount of time wandering through the confusing central bus station. Israeli Defense Force members with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders were everywhere. The casualness with which they handle their big guns is unnerving. My bus ended up with one IDF member and a big gun.

More surprising is the number of young men not in uniform carrying sidearms or automatic weapons. This is the most unnerving thing, because you don’t know who they are and why they have guns. None of the (many) young IDF women that I saw carried any weapons.

It’s routine in Israel to be wanded, TSA-style, and to have your bag searched in any establishment. Restaurants and bars in particular always have someone with a wand you must submit to. Israelis apparently don’t think twice about this.

On buses, military police board and ask people to show their IDs. They don’t ask at random. If you look or dressed Arab, you get asked. If not, you don’t. I didn’t get asked. In fact, more than one person told me I look Israeli, and in contrast to my time in Italy, almost every Israeli stranger I had any encounter with assumed I understood Hebrew.