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In This Issue

• Get Your Freak On, Dorks
• (Almost) Rejected by Israeli Security
• Beaten by the Retard: Adventures in Drama
• Letters to and from the Fed's Maxima and Co.
• Columbia Hipsters Are So Shallow You Think You’re in High School
• Are You a Terrorist? The Government's Shocking Answer
• Failed Terrorist Herbie Bin Laden Marries Jewish Wife, Dabbles in Scientology
• Poetry.com: Your High School Poems are Waiting for You…
• Bottled Water: Bigger than Jesus, and now Semen Free
• Revolve magazine: The Seventeenth Seal
• I Passed the Oral but Failed the Urine
• Horribly Hassled Hermaphrodites Harangue Humanity
• Trial and Error Your Way to Perfect Genital Design
• Shot Down! : Rejections Made Simple
• Your College Essay, but with less Suck
• New Twenties Bring Back Tired Old Monopoly Money Jokes

It was a quarter to twelve Sunday night two weeks ago, and I had just gotten in to Jerusalem after over five hours being interrogated at Ben Gurion airport by Shai, a kindly fellow from either Shin-Bet (Israel's CIA) or Shabak (Israel's secret police).  Ziad, a Palestinian who works in East Jerusalem, sat sipping Arabic coffee and smoking Arabic cigarettes with me, trying to help me relax and stop freaking out.

He told me about that time he was coming into the country.  He takes off his belt, everything out of his pockets, spreads his arms and legs, and lets the soldier pass the metal detector over him.  All quiet, a little scream at his shirt buttons, but the soldier says, hey, that's okay, and puts the metal detector on the table.

"Excuse me, sir," says Ziad, "But your machine is broken."

"I'm sorry," says soldier-man, not used to hearing Palestinians speak at all during security sweeps, probably.

"Your machine isn't working."

"What do you mean?"

"It missed something."

The soldier stops and stares at him, tensing up.  What's going to happen here?

Calmly, Zaid says, "I have balls of fucking steel."

*   *   *

At the beginning of this summer, when I hadn't been to Israel for years, I waited for hours at Ben Gurion airport while they ran a security check on me, just for being a young, scruffy-looking male traveling alone--i.e., a potential activist.  That was before I spent the summer working for the International Solidarity Movement--the fastest ways to get on the shit list of the Israeli security establishment besides having a Middle-Eastern name, being tanner than normal, or hell, at this point, just not being Jewish.

Ever since they realized that trying to drive out a bunch of peaceful international protesters by force and intimidation didn't work too well--the deaths of Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall, and Brian Avery and the ransacking of the ISM office in Bet Sahur, all in March and April 2003, only turned a lot of unpleasant media attention on the workings of the Israeli army--they've been trying to legally prevent ISM activists from entering the country.  

Yet after spending the summer working in the ISM media office, I wasn't even searched leaving the country, while my non-Jewish friends frequently reported being strip-searched.  Being on the right side of an Apartheid system (ie, being Jewish in Israel) can be convenient.

So I wasn't really prepared when Shai led me down the back tunnels and hallways of Ben Gurion for interrogation.  Since I was only coming in for a couple days for the totally legit wedding of my Orthodox older brother, I was sort of hoping there would be no hassle.  Or at least, if there was going to be shit, I was kinda hoping my family would be around, so they could see for themselves what it's like to be on the unfriendly side.

The worst thing about being interrogated unexpectedly is trying to lie on your feet. You have no idea how much they know about you.  Shai claimed he knew everything, and was only testing me to see if I was honest--if I was dishonest, he said, I'd be put on a plane straight back to New York.  And wouldn’t that be a shame, because I'd miss my brother's wedding, right?  (Actually, I considered it briefly 'cause it would make an even better article for the Fed: "I was Rejected By Israel.")

Pretending not to understand his Hebrew could only get me so far.  Acting casual could only get me so far because under pressure like that, whatever grandiose heroic plans I may have had, I just crumbled. 

Palms sweating and taking wayyyyy too long with each question just made things worse.

He started by getting me over-confident by making himself appear like a total idiot.  Then suddenly, shit started going down--

"What were you doing in Bet Sahur this summer?"

"Uhm, being a tourist?"

"No, what were you really doing?"

"What are you looking for?  Being a tourist."

"I'll give you a hint.  It starts with an 'I'."

(I was... being a tourist?  I love you?)

"You mean the ISM."

*   *   *

Of course, I told myself, hey, it's not anything they don't already know.  It's not like the phones aren't all tapped.  And besides, we have nothing to hide.

But still I stayed up all night, because I knew that in the end, unlike Ziad, my balls were perfectly squishy and sweated like a sponge under pressure.