Ben-Gurion Airport Has Everything Israel Loves: Privilege, Racism and a Way Out
A few hours of airport chaos sent Israelis into a fury and the media into a frenzy. But the obsession with Ben-Gurion reflects something deeper: the country's hierarchies, its sense of superiority and above all, its need for an escape route
Suddenly, I understood the madness of the Temple Mount Faithful. After all, we have the "Ben-Gurion Airport Faithful." Just don't dare touch our airport, the all-Israeli temple that has already been built.
It's been a long time since all of Israel was as furious as it was last Thursday, when it was hit by a two-to three-hour-long strike at the airport. The eyes of the sanctimonious TV presenters almost popped out of their heads from the effort to castigate those responsible. They were angrier than they'd ever been over anything before. Many Israelis swore they would change the party they'd vote for in the coming election. If it had lasted an hour or two longer, the streets would have been set on fire.
It really is unpleasant to see an airport exploding with anger and it's even more unpleasant to miss a flight you've been waiting for for a long time. But there was no proportionality between the dimensions of the tragedy and the public's wailing about it.
True, we're talking about an island state with air travel the only way out. There are the wars with no end, a steaming summer with soaring airline ticket prices, a sense of suffocation and despair and the need for the mini-vacations without which life is pointless, for rich and poor alike. Yet all these explanations cannot explain the extent of the madness that took hold.
Even before the debacle of August 20, there was no news program that did not include a report from the airport. Prices are up, prices are down; there are deals, there aren't deals; huge lines, empty terminals; Hainan Airlines cancelled flights, Air Baltic resumed them. We're told about what's happening at the terminal much more than we're being told about what's happening in Gaza. It's more important and interesting. It's an index of how Israel is accepted by the world, as well as an index of absolute happiness.
People talk about the price of flights more than the price of tomatoes, even though they buy more of the latter. Nothing beats ads about duty-free goods at the airport in reflecting the zeitgeist: "She has jet lag, it's been such a long time since she's breathed duty-free," goes one of them. There was also a sense of suffocation here in the years in which very few could afford a trip overseas to bring back a steam iron from Cyprus. The opening of the skies brought with it a mass stampede and flights were transformed from being marks of prestige into being signs of life.
More than the flights, Ben-Gurion Airport became a worshipped temple. It became the mini-Israel that has everything, only smaller. It became the country's regime in a nutshell, with discrimination of foreigners, who are taken aside, with differential treatment of Israeli Arabs, who are interrogated endlessly. There are no Palestinians from the territories there at all. That's how we like them, with the illusion of no occupation.
Security is handled the way Israelis love, with a hush-hush atmosphere all around. Did you pack your bags by yourselves? The rich, the well-connected and the VIPs wait in lounges, the foreign workers clean our tables and toilets after us, invisible, just as they are outside the airport. Checkpoints at the entrance are based on your accent: Jews go right through, Arabs to the side. Look at what takes place at Ben-Gurion Airport and you see Israel, with all the familiar aggression, racism, violence and vulgarity.
This is what a site of mass worship looks like. The exaggerated dwelling on what happens there reflects the disproportionate importance Israel attributes to it. The fact that there is only one such site adds an aura of importance to it. The sense of war on the home front is measured by the number of ballistic missiles fired at Israel, the number of blaring sirens and, no less than these, by the number of airlines that suspend their flights here. Pandemics also empty the terminal, with the airport serving as an index of health.
Above all towers the existential necessity of leaving, come what may, even for a short interlude. A twin to the craving for foreign passports, which has broken all records, is the passion for flights, which reflects the national mindset. The world loves us, the world hates us, we have to get out of here. We're the most and best at everything, but we have to fly away. The index of happiness in Israel is soaring, according to polls, just let us fly away from time to time. A foreign passport as an emigration option, an open airfield as an escape option.
Then, along comes a union boss called Pinhas Idan and messes with our holy of holies. He will be held to account much more than the truly heavyweight criminals.