Editor's Note: Linda Wolf is coauthor of Global Uprising: Confronting the Tyrannies of the 21st Century : Stories from a New Generation of Activists (Gabriola Island [Canada]: New Society Publishers, 2001). Wolf runs the Daughters-Sisters outreach program, the Youth Activism site and is an award-winning photographer. We are privileged to publish these self-reflective dispatches from Wolf's journeys, throughout Israel and Palestinian territories, as part of the Compassionate Listening Project, a peace initiative created by Leah Green that enables citizens to take part in the reconciliation process.

Arrival: June 27, 2002
Jerusalem

Dear Girls,

My first hit of Israel was seeing the people at the Toronto airport when I entered the waiting room for the flight to Tel Aviv. I came in through the airport crew entrance because my plane had been delayed and they took me through the back way; it was like coming into a theater from the stage entrance. The room was packed to the gills with Jewish and Arabic people. I felt such a stirring of tribal connection. After all the years I've rejected my Judaism, I felt like I belonged.

Almost everyone was dressed very conservatively; women, in dresses, head covers, and shawls; boys and men, in yarmulkes and a few in felt hats; a number of children and teenagers in more western clothes; and a couple people who looked out of place, like this one 60ish looking woman who stood out in pre-ripped blue jeans. But it was the feeling in the room that captured me. Very heavy and full of a foreboding feeling.

Fairly soon afterward arriving there, I found Linda, John, and Steward, 3 of the people in my Compassionate Listening delegation. They told me that Andrea, the leader of our delegation, had been detained by weather and wouldn't be able to meet us until Friday. We were going to have to make our way by ourselves when we got to Tel Aviv – get a taxi and figure it out.

We conferred about how we'd heard people were being turned back at the airport if they were thought to be activists. We talked about what our stories were going to be so that we didn't arouse suspicion when we went through customs. We practiced a few lines and agreed the truth was the best idea, but we'd leave out anything that would make us suspect, like the fact that I was staying on to join up with the International Solidarity Movement, duh! Then, quickly it was time to board the plane.

The plane took 12 hours from Toronto to Tel Aviv. My first lesson of the trip was not to make any assumptions about the people I met by what they looked like. I sat next to the to a young guy wearing a kind of Che Guevara t-shirt. We immediately started chatting. His name was Nimrod. He told me he was an Israeli citizen studying graphic design in Mexico City. There was another Israeli guy from Mexico sitting behind me. His name was Babs, like Grandma Barbara. I'd noticed him in the airport because he had punkish, bleached blond hair. We started chatting also. He told me he was 20 and was going home to join the Army. I was surprised. He said it was his duty.

I asked Nimrod a lot of questions after he told me that he'd been in the army already. I was struck by his sensitivity. He told me that he'd been assigned to protect the settlements but that he didn't agree with them being there, but there was nothing he could do. I interviewed him and took their picture, both of which I'm enclosing in this email.

It was a long flight. Midway through I woke up in a kind of dream-like state, typical of long plane flights, to see two young Jewish men in religious vestments in the Steward's food area, rocking and praying. They were wearing the black boxes on their foreheads like I'd seen in documentary films. It was surprising to see that they were given the space to do that on the plane. It said a lot about the airlines.

I was pretty sore by this point, all crumpled up in the Emergency exit seat that didn't lean back, so I changed seats. I sat down next to a middle age guy named Charles, an Israeli urban planning teacher, teaching in the US, who was going home to be engaged to an Ethiopian woman. After hearing what my plans were in Israel/Palestine, he had a lot to say. I found a lot of similarity with his thinking; his was an anti-globalization analysis, but when he began to talk about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I found myself arguing with him. He said the suicide bombers were an example of the end of civilized behavior in people. He said the world hated Israel and saw Israelis as colonizers and oppressors, but didn’t see that they were only protecting themselves and, "wouldn't I set up checkpoints if I were in their shoes?" His opinions of my intention to go into Palestine to be a human shield were very confronting to my idealism. He made me stop and think when he posited that maybe some part of it came out of a sense of internalized racism, along with my commitment to peace; me, wanting to go into Palestine to show those people that I was a "good Jew." I'd never really stopped and thought about me as having internalized oppression. I'd grown up in a time and place when I didn’t feel any anti-Semitism, or prejudice directly. I learned about it when I was older but it really didn't affect me. I'd associated it with African and Native Americans and minorities in the US, but never about myself as a Jew.

When the plane landed, I took out my camera to photograph Nimrod and Babs outside in the light, and left it dangling from my shoulder as I boarded a bus to go to check-in at customs. We walked passed members of the Israeli security force as we boarded, but I was in such a deep conversation with Nimrod, I didn’t notice them until the bus was moving and he pointed them out; they were dressed like regular people. He told me they were looking for suspicious people and would pull them aside to question them. I thought to myself somewhat arrogantly that I must not look suspicious; I'd get through customs no problem. My second lesson was about to happen.