Today was primarily a travel day. We crossed over the border from the Sinai Peninsula (Egypt) into Israel. We had a potentially serious problem at the Israeli side of the border crossing. My good friend, Edward, a fellow seminarian from Mercer University, is Kuwaiti born, and even though he has been living in the United States since he was eight years old, he unfortunately fit the profile that Israeli agents must have been looking for. He was taken into an interrogation room and kept there for upwards of two hours. They treated him with great suspicion.
The kept asking him very detailed questions, demanding to know why he didn’t have all of the answers. For example, they wanted to know the name of every hotel that we stayed at on the trip, something I could not provide now if my life depended on it. They asked him detailed questions about why he was going to seminary, where he lived in the United States, why he studied engineering at Georgia Tech. They searched every inch of his suitcase and everything in his possession, wanting an explanation of why he was carrying every item in his suitcase. They were particularly disturbed with the five-inch commemorative plaque that every member of our group was given by our tour guide in Syria. They kept asking him the same questions, over and over again, hoping to catch him in an inconsistency. The questioning was very intense and quite dehumanizing. Coming to know Edward as well as I have in the last two weeks, I had every confidence that his gentle personality and kind nature would hold up to rigorous questioning. However, when he came out, Edward admitted that he had almost been pushed to the breaking point, nearly responding to the intense interrogation style in anger, even though he knew that it would have been counterproductive.
My thought is that if someone with Edward’s wonderful temperament can be so offended by rough interrogation techniques and the dehumanizing treatment that he received, might we not be doing the same thing to Arabic people wishing to visit the United States, thereby angering people whom we eventually will need as friends. The balance between the security interests of the United States and protection of the rights of Arabic citizens coming into our country is a difficult one to strike. What I have seen today makes me more interested in seeking a proper balance to the diverse concerns imbedded in the situation.
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