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THE FACE OF ISRAEL - WITH SENTINEL ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT MARIO URIARTE

BY MARIO URIARTE
Sentinel Israel Correspondent
Mario Uriarte © 2009

What does an Israeli look like? If you walked passed one outside of Israel, would you know? According to Abraham J. Heschel, “A face is a message, a face speaks, often unbeknown to the person. Is not the human face a living mixture of mystery and meaning?” Which begs the question, what is the mystery conveyed in the face of Israel? You might ask yourself if I am talking about an Arab Israeli or a Jewish Israeli? What kind of Jewish Israeli: Mizrahi? Ashkenazi? Sephardic? The halotzim, pre 1948 Israeli settlers, perhaps? Maybe the standard should be anyone who is at least third generation Israeli, like many Ethiopian Israelis? Maybe the face of Israel should be someone who incorporates all of these traits, like my friend Gali Green, who is equal parts Ashkenazi, Polish, and Mizrahi, Libyan?

Some of my American friends in Israel would lie out on the beach in Tel-Aviv or on the grass by the pool. They were trying to be as tanned as their genetics would allow. I assumed they were trying to look more Israeli (fitting in is very important to foreigners) but one of them pointed out that Israelis come in all colors. Which is true, but then why do people speak Hebrew to me, and to my blond haired and blue-eyed friend, Rosanna, they don’t. I was on the bus with an American friend, Colby, who has a fair complexion and dark hair, when a woman began speaking to her in Russian. This woman also spoke Hebrew and we were in Be’er-Sheva Israel, but she took one look at Colby and decided Russian, not Hebrew, was her best bet.

At the Egyptian border the taxi drivers had a good time guessing everyone’s ethnicity, and they were quite good at it. The Arab-Israelis were darker than the average Israeli, but not nearly as dark as the average Egyptian. It was made clear through heated negotiations over taxi prices that Arab-Israelis are not Arabs in same way as Egyptians, and the reasons have nothing to do with appearance. However, with regard to appearances, Arab-Israelis have high cheek bones with sharp edges, like Egyptians. They were also more likely than Israelis to have styled facial hair. A lot of Israelis have facial hair, too, but their hair grows wildly unkempt. Arab-Israelis with facial hair typically have a neatly trimmed beard or goatee.

Egyptians, on the other hand, are much darker and all about the moustache. For them it’s more than a moustache, it’s a stache; a symbol of cool, righteous virtue and manliness. On the nine hour bus ride from Cairo to the border Rosanna, Elana and I were subjected to an Egyptian movie of Chuck Norris-ian proportions. I do not say we were “subjected” to this film because it was an Egyptian film or because it was in Arabic but because the acting was bad, the action was bad and, granted we couldn’t understand the language, but the story sure seemed bad and hard to follow. What I took away from the movie was that there is great power in the stache. The hero character, a skinny young man with a face as smooth as a baby’s back side, was tough, but not tough enough. All of that changed once the bad-guy, who had a beard, had him thrown in jail where our hero grew a mighty stache. All of a sudden, he could and would fight anyone: men twice his size, whole gangs of men, gangs of men with weapons, and he beat them all. Thanks to the power of the stache anything was possible.

I have never seen an Israeli, Jewish or Arab, with just a moustache. Facial hair, however, was not what made Israelis the easiest tourists to spot in Egypt. They were the hippy looking people with shorts, sandals with ankle straps and wild hair fettered into a ponytail. The other people with shorts were the Europeans and Americans, but they had neatly trimmed hair. If you were from either the states or Europe you could probably guess correctly where someone else was from by their clothing.

The friends I was traveling with had a more fair complexion and most people guessed correctly the first time that they were Americans. As for me, most assumed I was not American. Many guessed Egyptian, but in the bazaar most merchants spoke to me in Italian or Spanish. One merchant in particular spoke exceptional Spanish from having lived in Spain for two years. I asked him if he was at all Spanish and had family there. His countenance stiffened and he challenged me to take a good look at his face. I am Egyptian, he said. Although there are plenty of Israelis with North African or Middle East features, a distinction is evident between them that each side can read in the others face.

I take pride in the mystery of my face that no one can read, but all find welcoming. What I mean by that is everyone thinks I’m one of them. When I’m talking to an Israeli they think I’m Israeli, even the ones I meet in Europe. In the spring of 2004 I was on holiday in Amsterdam and was approached by many Israelis speaking Hebrew, and one person asked me if I was Lebanese like him. Europeans think I’m Italian or Spanish. One time while checking into a hostel in Barcelona, the clerk was not satisfied when I told him where my family was from. He insisted on knowing where they lived before that. I realized he would not let me go until I admitted my family lineage goes back to the Basque region of Spain. He declared he knew it all along—I guess it was evident in my face—and he let me go with a satisfied smile. The same was true in Egypt—they thought I was Egyptian. Also, when I go on hikes wearing a kafia, a large Arab neckerchief, wrapped around my head, all agree I look like a Bedouin. And at a military check point near the Jordanian border the Jordanian soldiers asked the taxi driver several times where I was from and tried speaking to me in Arabic even after I gave them my passport. I take it as a complement when people, any people, see me as one of their own.

Israelis always find it hard to believe me when I tell them I don’t speak Hebrew; part of their disbelief might be from the fact that I tell them I don’t speak Hebrew in Hebrew. Then the guessing game begins. I respond with a thick American accent, so they think I must be a good Sephardic boy reconnecting with family here, but no. All of my family is in America or El Salvador.

El Salvador sparks a lot of interest. Everyone has a good idea where it is but they don’t know for certain, and they are surprised that Jews come from that part of the world. Most of them, I’m sure, have never met a Salvadoreno before. El Salvador is a puny country about the same geographic size as Israel and almost the same population. Some ask what it’s like, and I’m proud to tell them about our beautiful white sandy beaches, crystal clear warm water, and lush jungles. El Salvador has remained a very important part of my family’s life. It is common for family members to go back. Most recently my mother went there with her husband as part of their honeymoon. And in the late sixties my father and uncles returned to work on the family ranch as a way of avoiding the Vietnam draft. They were forced to return to the U.S. when civil war broke out. Thankfully by then there was no more fear of being drafted.

There is an important connection between my family and our country of origin. Because of that, I used to make the mistake of asking Israelis about their family roots and whether or not they had been back to visit their families. I thought I was being friendly, but I was just being ignorant. The Mizrahi, for the most part, are not allowed back in their countries of origin. Their families were all driven out or killed. It is the same for Ethiopian Jews, and many of the halotzim were Ashkenazim either fleeing the holocaust or having survived it. The multitude of Russian speaking Olim, immigrants, from the former U.S.S.R could, theoretically, go back to visit their country of origin, but they also give me strange looks and tell me their families have all been driven off or killed. One time I made the mistake of offering a toast to Russia. My three roommates speak Russian as their first language and Kayla’s family, a friend of mine who was drinking with us, is from the Ukraine and she speaks Russian as well. My toast was intended to be in their honor. Kayla flat out refused to drink to Russia, my roommate Evgeni turned his head and rolled his eyes at the wall, and my other friends drinking with us looked around the room uncomfortably.

When I used to ask that question (where is your family from and have you been back to visit them?) I would typically get the aforementioned response, and I told them how sad it is they cannot visit the countries of origin. I think they are missing out on a great deal of culture and values unique to family heritage. But they don’t know any different and accept the situation as a fact of life.

The fact is Israel is all these people have. When you look into the face of an Israeli, the mystery you see is of a divers people from all over the world with one common history, one common heritage, one sad story of Diaspora and ultimate redemption by reuniting with Eretz Israel. Israelis are many people from many lands with one home.

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