On Sunday, I went to Jerusalem, intending to go to church early in the morning, and mail a package home as well. I woke up a bit late, and in the hope of making it to church, I took a group taxi.
We were stopped at the checkpoint leading from the West Bank to the city, and the police pulled the car over. It turns out our driver didn't have his papers in order, and we had to wait for some 20 minutes. I saw bus after bus getting stopped, and the Palestinians made to get off and stand in the sun for their IDs to be checked. I wish I could get a photo of this, but knew it would cause trouble. Bored and not really thinking, I turned my camera to look through some photos I took in the recent days.
All of a sudden, an angry Border Police officer came up to me, and accused me of taking photos of him. I did no such thing and tried to explain, but he grabbed my camera from me and began looking through the pictures. He came across some photos of soldiers searching people in Hebron. Getting even angrier, he called some police officers over, who loudly ordered me to step out of the car and to hand over my passport. I asked them whether it is legal for them to go through my pictures, they yelled "why you take pictures of soldiers???"
Saying "I am a volunteer in the International Solidarity Movement, and my job is to document your daily abuses of the Palestinian people" would have been truthful, but stupid. It also would have put the Palestinian driver in jeopardy.
I pretended to be a dumb tourist, and said I had no idea it is illegal to take photos and video of Israeli soldiers. Actually, taking pictures of them is legal, but arguing this with them, especially in the situation I was in, would have been a bad idea. Looking terribly confused and infinitely repentant, I told them how in Canada it is perfectly ok to take photos of the police (which is true), and I thought Israel was the same, and I was sooo sorry and just didn't know.
They demanded what I was doing in Hebron, and I answered that "I heard there is a war there" and wanted to check it out. I told them I just love taking photos of everything I see. For added measure, and doing everything possible to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, I said I am very interested in seeing "Israeli counter-terrorism operations". They kept asking me what I am doing in Hebron and what am I thinking taking photos of the soldiers. I kept giving them the same answer again and again.
After a while, the police officers calmed down a bit, and eventually they returned my passport to me, without taking any pictures of it or writing down the particulars. The Border Police guy was still a bit worked up and insisting I took a photo of him (which I didn't), but the police ignored him.
I was told I need to delete my photos of the soldiers. I started doing so, which wasn't a problem since I take around 400 photos a day, and a lot of them are garbage. The ones that are the least worst make it on to my blog, so deleting the absolutely terrible ones was no problem. I started slowly deleting photo after photo, until one of the cops snapped that he has better things to do, and told me to go. One of them shook my hand, probably feeling sorry for me. The others shook their heads, most likely wondering if all Canadians are this stupid to not know that photographing Israeli soldiers as they commit human rights violations is not acceptable. One guy, looking annoyed, pointed his finger at me like at a disobedient child and said in a loud voice "You no more take pictures of Israeli soldiers! Do you understand!". Yes sir.
Fortunately, the men in dark blue were too busy to spend more time with such an ignorant North American, and let me go,
This all took about 30 minutes.
Unfortunately, after this adventure was over, I didn't make it in time for church. Next time, I intend to delete photos from my camera each time I travel to Jerusalem, and keep my camera out of sight.
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