Justified Discrimination or Just Racial Discrimination

I just added a new item to my Arabs in Israel blog, I check it out if your are interested, it is called: Justified Discrimination or Just Racial Discrimination.

The Civil Marriage (Photos soon)

Even though I had a wedding, a ring and a wife, I was not officially married yet. In the state of Israel no entity has the authority to wed a Muslim man to a Christian woman, not anymore. Even though such marriage is allowed in Islam, the Muslim religion court no longer sanctions such marriages. I don’t know why this change came about, I am inclined to believe it was a restriction imposed by the state of Israel, and since the judjes and personal of the Muslim court are all employees of the state, they are obliged to conform to such directives. They could have at least protested it, but I have feeling that they were happy to the woman she had ot convert to Islam before they sanction the marriage.

Since my wife had no intentions of converting to Islam (nor I to Christianity), civil marriage was our only remaining option. Yet civil marriages don’t exist in Israel, our only option would be to get married abroad. Luckily it seems many couples face this same problem in Israel, and have no other option other than the ‘Civil marriage abroad’ loophole, and were there is demand there is business; tour companies offer ‘civil marriage abroad’ packages, were they have everything arranged for you: flights, hotel, transportation, and the marriage ceremony. The closest destination for such marriages is Cyprus, that small Mediterranean island of the cost of Lebanon.

A lot of drama preceded our first trip; in order to get married we needed certificates that we were single, each from his own country. Mine was easy to get, Mauge on the other hand had to get hers from Bolivia. She asked a friend to do the paper work for her in Bolivia, and we sent some money for her to pay for the expenses, including a translation by a notary and the DHL shipping fee. Unfortunately that friend sent us a birth certificate inasted; despite the fact Mauge had made it very clear to her that she needed a social status certificate. We had a problem time wise, we were not sure we would be able to get the document in time for our trip, and we considered postponing the trip, but after some consideration we decided to try to get the paper in time. This time we gave the task to Mauge’s cousin, and before mailing the document we asked her to scan it and sent us an electronic copy. In order not to waste time, I sent the electronic copy to a notary, to starty the translation work (the document needed to be in English). But we needed to have the original document, before the notary would hand us the certified translation.

We tracked the document at the DHL web site, we were pleased to see that after two days the package had already arrived to Madrid, we figured in a couple of days we would have the package in our hands. Yet that could not been further than the truth, instead of the package being put on a direct plane to Israel, it went through England, Belgium and Germany, taking several more days to arrive to Israel. The package arrived to Israel only to be detained at the airport. We were told that customs has detained, but in Israel that usually means the shipment was held for security checks. It is unlikely that our envelop had aroused suspicions, it is that DHL usually send many package in one big container, and it is likely that the whole container was held for security checks, and our package was an innocent victim of the circumstances. Anyway I was in trouble, I needed the original document to pick the translation from the notary, and I had set an appointment with the notary on Sunday, one day before my trip. I decided it was time for a creative solution, I made a color print of the electronic copy I had, and made look as good as possible. I took that with me to the notary when I went to pick up my translation, the woman there just asked me if I had the original, I showed her the print, but she did not bother to check it, not even a quick examination, and just handed me my translation. When I arrived home, I received a call from DHL telling me that my package was finally released, and that it would be delivered to me the next day, unfortunately that would be of no good to me, as I was going to fly early morning, and I had the certified translation anyway. The package took about 12 days to arrive with DHL, with normal mail one could get it 14 days, with less than 10% of the cost.

After all the hardship we went through to get this document, we were delighted to finally be able to hold it in our hands. Yet our joy was not to last, at midnight we set out for Cyprus, but we made it no further than the Tel Aviv airport; it turned out that my wife needed a visa to travel to Cyprus, and we were turned back at the airline check in desk.

I had checked this matter when planning my vacation, and I was sure that she did not need such visa, at least that’s what it said on web site about Cyprus which listed the visa requirement for various countries. Even if I had called the embassy, that probably would not have helped, since even they were not aware of this; when I called and asked, they told me no visa was required. “If no visa is required, then how come we were turned back at the airport” I told her, so she passed me to the consulate were I was told that Bolivians do need a visa. You see Cyprus has recently joined the EU, and one of the effects of that was a change in Visa requirements for some none EU states. It was not fun to make to the airport in the middle of a very cold night, depriving our selves of sleep only to be tuned back home.

The issue got more complicated; the Cyprus embassy told us that in order for Mauge to get a visa to Cyprus, she would be required to have a valid visa for Israel for at least two month from the date of the trip, but Mauge only had one more month left on her Israeli visa. So we decided to rebook the trip at the end of January, giving us enough time to take care of all the paper work. We lost half of the money we paid.

We decided to leave matter until after the holidays, we had both Eed El Adha (The Muslim festivity), and the end of year Christian festivities upon us. After the new year we got back to the business of taking care of the paper work. We went and extended Mauge’s Israeli visa for three more month, then applied for a visa at the Cyprus embassy, this time things went smoothly and we got all the paper work done.

On Sunday midnight we set out for Cyprus again, this time I decided not to sleep before the trip. We traveled by train to the airport, and boarder our flight at 7am, and arrived to Cyprus at 8am, we then headed to our hotel. Our ceremony was scheduled at 10 at the municipality building. I had decided to put on my nice outfit at home before leaving, so I would not need to change in the morning, Mauge opted otherwise. After we checked in, Mauge stayed to take a shower and change, meanwhile I took the opportunity to have my breakfast.

Then we walked to the municipality, which was a couple of blocks down the road. There we handed our papers, along with a few more couples. One of if the couples was an English guy and an Australian young woman, another couple was from Lebanon I think. We waited a while, and we both felt quite nervous. Eventually we were called into a room, were we read our vows in front of the marriage lawyer, we kissed, and then signed the document.

We would have preferred to head back home straight after this, as they were forecasting a stormy cold weather for the days to come. Unfortunately because of the scarcity of flights during this period of the year, we had to spend another three days in Cyprus.

Cyprus has an interesting history; basically during the sixties the northern part of the country was invaded by Turkey, they drove out all the Greek speaking residents out of there homes, and took over their properties. Kind of reminds me of another occupation that took place in a close by country: Palestine. Anyway these refugees still live today in the southern part of the Island, and the occupation of the northern side continues.

Cyprus had recently joined the EU, and in the first of January changed their currency to Euros. I had not known about this, but I was pleased to realize that I could pay with the Euros I had brought with me, without the need to exchange money.

The weather forecast turned out true, it was rainy, windy and very cold, and we did not have much gusto to do any sightseeing. We found a nice restaurant a few blocks from the hotel, which had fireplace and a chimney, and we would spend long periods of time there. We would order our launch, then desert, then some tee, taking our time and enjoying the warmth of the fire.

Every now and then we would gather our forces, and go out for a short excursion, to do some shopping or just take a walk on the beach. Cyprus offers some exciting sightseeing possibilities, but we decided we would leave it for another time, a time when it would be warmer.

Our return flight no more convenient than our going flight; we arrived to Israel at midnight, and made it our bed only at 3am. But we were lucky our flight was allowed to land, as Israel was in the middle of a snow storm, and we heard that some earlier flights had been diverted to Cyprus. Anyway I could not even enjoy much sleep, as I had to report to work the next morning. But at least we could feel content; we finally had in our hands an official document, recognizing our marriage.

The Festivities

We had quite a busy holiday season this year; Eed el Adha (The Muslim sacrifice festivity), and the Christian end of year holidays fell at about the same time. This is bound to happen sometimes, because the Muslims use a lunar calendar, meaning the holidays move about 20 days every year.

First it was Eed el Adha, which I started with the tradition of visiting the dead. I woke early and went to the cemetery, to visit my fathers grave, and the graves of other deceased members of the family, but after that I had to go to work, yes I went to work on the first day of Eed el Adhah; I had no more vacation days left this year, and I was planning to go to the Dead Sea the next day. Unfortunately that meant I did not have much time to visit the leaving members of my family.

In the evening we had the traditional grill at the family house, but without my mother; she was in Mecca, Saudi Arabia performing the Hajj pilgrim. A great spiritual experience I imagine, but at the same time an arduous and dangerous trip; my mother was one among millions of pilgrims, who were performing the Hajj ritual, and the ritual requires performing certain ceremonies at specific times, this means that these millions of pilgrims are all at the same place, at the same time, doing the same thing, whether it is rounding Al-Ka’aba, staying the night at mount Arafat or throwing stones at monument if Ipleace (the Devil).

On Thursday we woke early and drove the Dead Sea, were we had a three day beach holiday. We were fortunate with the weather: twenty degrees and sunny. We even dared to swim in the cold salty waters of the Dead Sea, it was very cold, but once you dip yourself inside, you get used to it. The Dead Sea is the lowest point on land, -418 meters bellow sea level, this means that the water that drains through Jordan river and other streams, has no were to go. Water loss happens only through evaporation, but the salts and minerals in the water don’t evaporate and they keep accumulating in the sea. The result is that waters are so salty that you can float on them, without even moving a finger, just lay back and enjoy.

Because of all the minerals that get deposited and accumulated at the Dead Sea, a thriving industry of beauty and health products has risen, drying large parts of the northern part of the sea to extract the minerals. One of the famous products of the Dead Sea is the mineral rich mud, which one can apply to the skin, and supposedly has much health benefits.

Saturday afternoon we headed back home, just in time to welcome my mother back from the Hajj. But before that we had a visit from Santa Clause.

I arranged for him to bring presents to Alejandro and both of my nephews: Ahmad and O’mri. O’mri the little one was a bit overwhelmed by three Santas running around the house, and sought refuge in the hands of his mother. Ahmad and Alejandro reacted better to the presence of Santa. We all took some photos with the Santas, next to our Christmas tree, which we had prepared before our Dead Sea vacation. Mauge insisted we use a natural pine tree rather than an artificial one. We set it up, and decorated it with the help of our friends, Suhil and Mervat.

My mother’s bus arrived at midnight. She came back with bags loaded of gifts for everybody, and one gallon of water from the scared spring of Zamzam. The next few days were busy days for her, as many people came to congratulate her.

A couple of days later it was Christmas, and on Christmas day we traveled to the city of Nazareth to visit the Church of Annunciation. It would have been more appropriate to visit the Nativity Church in Bethlehem at this time of year, but we had such a hectic holiday season that we decided to leave it for next year.

A week after it was the New Year celebration, this time we celebrated at our home; we had a grill, and invited my sister’s family and my ant’s family.

That was the end of 2007, and now 2008 begins, but I haven’t made any new resolutions for the New Year; I have plenty to get done this year without making any new resolutions: Obtain residency status for my girlfriend and her son, and advancing my career at Intel, will sure keep more than occupied in the coming months.

I wish you all a fruitful and happy 2008.

The Religions Ceremony

In Israel it is not possible anymore for two persons from different religions to get officially married. It started with the Jewish clergy (Rabanoot), who wanted to have control over who can get married and who can't (in Judaism bastards are not allowed to get married), so they opposed any kind of civil marriage, so civil marriage was never instated in the state of Israel. Then it was a question of what to do with the Muslims and Christians, and it was decided that the Muslim Clergy and the Christian Clergy, would also receive total control over marriages of Muslims and Christians respectively, similar to their Jewish counterpart.

Still, according to Islamic Religion (Sharia’ah) it is allowed for a Muslim man to marry a Jewish or a Christian woman, and this was the case in Israel until recently. Then for some reason the Muslim Clergy (Al-Mahkama Al-Shara’iah) decided to follow in the steps of its Jewish counter part, and stopped endorsing mixed religion marriages. Now I don’t know if this was their decision or if it was imposed on them by the state, but I do know is that they starting opposing something which is explicitly allowed in Islam (Halal). Now it is required of the woman to change its religion to Islam, before the are willing to hand out a marriage certificate.

Now the process of turning into a Muslim is simpler than in other religions; e.g in Judaism one is required to go through a 1.5 year conversion process (Gior), before being declared a Jew, reformist Jews made this conversion process simpler and shorter, but there conversions are not recognized by the Rabanoot, and the Rabanoot word is the one that counts in Israel. To become a Christian one would have to be Baptized, and priests are generally reluctant to convert anyone, unless they are sure he is doing it from pure faith reasons. Islam has the simplest initiation process out of the three religions, one just needs to say two sentences: Ashhad an la ilah illa Allah, washlad ana Muhamadan rasulu Allah; it basically means that one recognizes that there is one God, and that Muhammad is his prophet, and that makes him officially a Muslim.

I knew my wife would have objections to get converted to Islam, so I decided to not bring up this Issue before our wedding, but at the same time I wanted my marriage to be accepted in the eyes of the family, I did not want to give the religions member in my family, any reason to pester about religions issues. I decided to have a religious ceremony, conducted by a religious man (Shekh); a ceremony which is perfectly proper from religions point of view, but would not be recognized by the state of Israel.

I encountered a problem finding a religions man that would marry us; the official religions men (Shekhs), who are actually employees of the state, and they have been explicitly forbidden from sanctioning off the record marriages. So I had to find a Shekh who was not employed by the state, finally I managed to find someone with some help; a Shekh who is married to four woman (sll off the record of course, because it would not allowed by the laws of Israel), and he would readily help anyone who seeks to get married off the record, for the small fee of 300 Shekels (~60 Euros).

The Muslim wedding ceremony would seem strange to Westerners, and would probably be abhorred by feminists; the actually ceremony does not take place between the bride and the groom; the bride must choose a man to represent her in the marriage, usually it is the father of the bride, or some other senior man of her family. Since my wife had no body from her family here, the honor went to one of my uncles. I explained to Mauge what to do; she told the Shekh that she accept my ancle Saa’do as her representative (I taught her how to say yes I agree in Arabic), then the ceremony took place between me and my uncle; Mauge was not present. The Shekh explained to us what is required from the husband and the wife; the man must treat his wife with kindness (no beating of the wife), and the woman is required to obey her husband. The Shekh specifically stressed the kindness part to me, telling me that Westerners think we are barbaric people, and we treat our wives badly, and we must show them that this absolutely not true. Then I held hands with my uncle (I am not joking), and we each said our vows, which were dictated word by word to us by the priest.

So now I managed to have a wedding which would recognized by family, and with out having to bring the issue of religion in front my wife. But alas this type of marriage is not recognized by the state of Israel, and we would have to find a solution for this, if we are to obtain residency for my Wife and Alejandro.

Officially Married (Sort of)

Arriving to this new country (for my girlfriend at least), we had only a couple of weeks to prepare ourselves for the wedding, this is in addition to getting our apartment up to shape; buying all kinds of necessary stuff like a washing machine, cloth hangers, groceries, etc. For the wedding we had to buy cloth for me the bride and for Ale, two sets of cloth for each night of the wedding, and some more less formal cloth for the preceding nights.

In reality the wedding started almost a week before the actual wedding day; every night family, friends and neighbors gathered, in our family house (that of my mother), and we had food, music and dancing, we call these nights: Ta'aleel, they constitute a warm up for the final two days of the wedding. They started with a small number of people, and this number increased each night, up to the final.

The final days of the wedding are the official ones, the ones we sent people get invitations for. The first night we had a dinner followed by the ceremonies of the Hla'a (Shaving) and Henna.


These are the tradional ceremonies of the Palestinian Arabic wedding.

In the ceremony of the Hla'a I basically get my beard shaved in public.

In the Henna ceremony they pain our hands with Henna.

My girlfriend was not so happy with here making during this night, they had over done her make up, and she was upset she did not look at all like herself, I have to agree with here, I barely recognized here when she came back from the ladies saloon. This happened in spite of us making very clear that we would like her to look natural during the wedding. Well at least after the fiasco of the first night, they got the message, and here making for the final night was more natural, and quite to our liking.


The final night of the wedding was held in a wedding hall, in the style of western wedding.


I had my suit and tie and the bride wore her white dress.


My mother had the choice of who to invite for the first night, but I made the calls when it came to the wedding hall, we, mi and my bride, wanted to have a small party, with only close friends and family invited, in total we had 130 persons, including the kids, and we had a lovely party.

Mauge managed to get in touch with a friend from Bolivia who lives in Haifa, close by. Actually she never knew this woman before, but they had a common friend, and she invited her to our wedding, she arrived with her husband, who is from New Zealand, both are working in the World Baha'i center in Haifa. It was nice for Mauge to have someone to talk to in Spanish during the wedding.

Mostly Arabic music was played, but I had prepared a compilation of Latin songs on a CD, and we had Manu Chao during the warm up, and later we had Juanes 'A Dios Le Pido' to dance, which was a big hit, and I found to be the best part of the party, a lot of people joined to dance, it was the closing song of the party, and unfortunately the photographer had shut down his equipment so it was never filed. I personally enjoyed dancing to this more than any of the Arabic songs that had been played in the wedding.


Now in the next post I will explain why I am only 'sort of' married officially.

To Bolivia and Back

After a very long journey I finally made back to Bolivia, and immediately suffered from the altitude sickness the day after; I had to take it easy for a couple of days, and drink a lot of coca tea, until my body adapted to the altitude. This time I did not stay for long in a hotel, only a couple of days, in the same hotel Colon were I stay every time. The old lady owner greeted me with a lot of gusto as always, I had told her the time before that it would me my last time in Bolivia, but I guess one should never say never.

My girlfriend invited me to stay at her family house, were I was well received, and told that from now on I am member of the family. We had a dinner the next day, which was attended by a few dozen members of here family. We and Bolivian are very alike in this respect; the larger family (uncles, ants, cousins and nephews) is an important part of our life, and we often have gatherings with them. In the dinner they served tradional Bolivian dishes including my favorite: Picante de Lengua (Cow tong in a sauce with vegetables)

A couple of days later we had another dinner this time I was asked to cook, I made Kafta (Kebab in the oven), and Tabuleh. It was quite a success, and I had to make Tabule again before leaving Bolivia, for the ones who could not attend the first dinner.

We had investigated the possibility of getting married in Bolivia, but decided not to attempt it, as the red tape was too long; I needed to get my papers from the Ministry of Interior here in Israel, translate them, certify them in the Israeli consulate here, then in the Bolivian consulate here, then again in the Israeli consulate in Bolivia, and after this whole process we would receive our Bolivian marriage certificate in Spanish, which I would then have to do the whole reverse process again to get it certified for use in Israel.

Although we could not have our civil marriage ceremony in Bolivia, we wanted to have some kind of celebration for her family. Mauge decided it would be a launch in a country side hotel (casa campestre). We had a buffet of traditional Creole dishes (a lot of meat), followed by
traditional music and dancing. After the dining and dancing was finished, it was time for speeches, Vladimer, Mauges brother started, by announcing to the guests that I and Mauge were going to get married and go live in Israel, it was a shock to some of the guests as Mauge did not tell all of them what was the occasion for the launch. Then one of her uncles spoke and then it was my turn to speak, I was suddenly put under the spot light, and I had no speech prepared, but I improvised something (in Spanish) which left my girlfriend quite impressed. After that there was a lot of hugging and crying, as we received the congratulations and the good byes for each guest.

Then it was time for us to fly to back to Israel, it was an emotional time for my girlfriend and her family of course, the fact that there Mauge was going to leave to live in another country was sad for them, and the stories they heard in the news about my country further fueled there worries, and again there was a lot of crying.

The trip back went quite well, Alejandro the 5 year old son of my girlfriend behaved well during the flights, he passed his time during the long flight by watching the same animation movie four times in a raw, and he he still watched with gusto the fourth time. Everything else went smoothly, and we made back to Israel.

If you are wondering about my ipod speakers that were confiscated from me in the airport in Israel, I have not seen them again, I tried to retrieve them in Milano, but I was told that they were shipped to head courters, in Roma, well they served me well for a year and half.

Big month a head

It has been a while since I updated my blog, but what could I have told you about; that I work from 8 to 5, Sunday to Thursday, every week, and then maybe go fishing the weekend, suffice it to say that life traveling was much more interesting. So you might ask what made me stop traveling and get a steady job? Well for starters I would need money to continue traveling, and I about traveled as much as I could with the money I had. Second I feel I am getting to old for a life of traveling and bachelorhood, now I actually enjoy just lying on a comfortable couch watching TV. Third I found the woman who I want to build my future together with; I am now in San Paolo airport in Brazil, on my way to Bolivia, were I will be for the next 10 days, then I will head back to my country, but this time it will be very different; I will be accompanied by my girlfriend, Maria Eugenia, along with her 5 years old son, Alejandro. Two weeks later, on the 8th and 9th of November, we plan to get married in my home town of Shefa-Amr.

Getting married, moving to a new apartment and traveling around the world to bring my girlfriend, all have to been done within one month, you can imagine why this is a big month for me, probably the biggest month of my life. So how do I feel about? Sometimes I feel buoyant and excited, other times anxious; I guess I am just worried something might go wrong, something that I don't have control over, hopefully all will go as planned, and I will be happily married in one month.

I can't do without some moaning about airports and flying; at the Tel-Aviv airport, I received a white security sticker (they used to have color coded ones in the past) this reminded me of an article I read about this not long ago, it said although they were discontinuing the use of color codes, there will still be different numerical codes on the stickers for Arabs and Jews. Never the less I allowed my self to hope, that this time might be different, and that I a might actually get away with a quick security checkup. But alas I was send to the special queue of the foreigners and Arabs, were people receive more length security checks. I watched the others to see how long each security check lasted, and I seem to have gotten it worst than most; I still had to go through a body check, which most others seem to have been exempt from. Never the less the overall time of the security check was about 30 minutes, which is not that bad, except for that problem with my ipod speakers, which protracted the process for another half an hour.

Now when I started my travels, I carried around with me a brand new swiss army knife, the problem is that almost always I forgot to check it in with my suitcase, so whenever I got to the hand luggage security check, I would have to leave my swiss army knife there. I would then buy a new knife, and carry it around until my next flight, were I would loose it again, this repeated itself a few times, after the third time though I decided to give up on carrying a swiss army knife in my travels. Now airline regulations are very clear about brining a knife on board a plane, and a sensible person can certainly see the danger in bringing a weapon on board a plane, after all thats how the 911 hijackers managed to take over the planes. But this is the second time that my electronics have been an issue, the other one being my last, nightmarish flight with El-Al from Paris, and I don't recall hearing or seeing any warnings about carrying electronic devices on flights.

I was told that the speakers were found suspicious by their scans, and would have to go on a separate flight, just as they did with my laptop last time. I found it a bit of an absurd idea to send my little ipod speakers in a separate package all they way to Bolivia, knowing I would only stay there for about 10 days. I made some creative suggestions to resolve the matter, which were all rejected; give me a refund and I will buy new ones at the duty free, keep it here for me until I come back, mail it back to my home address (they actually accepted this suggestion, except that the mail office was already closed). In the end they agreed to send it to Milan instead, and that I would pick it up at the Alitalia lost and found office on my way back. Just to clarify things, this was the Israeli airport security that insisted on this and not Alitalia.

Now their excuse was that the speakers would need to go through a more thorough and length security check, which they would not be able to complete before the flight scheduled takeoff time. I think this is a bunch of crap, I think there is no such security check. If they suspected this might be some kind of explosive device, they could just have me check it in rather than carry it with me on the plane, this way I will not able to use it on the flight. I think they are trying to also cover the possibility that this is some kind of explosive device with a timer, how can they then be sure it is not? they keep it on the ground during the scheduled time of the flight, and when that time passes without the device going off, then they are sure. Anyway I still have to ask my self, haven't all these genius companies who devices these security scanners, tried to run some common electronics through this scanners to see if they can distinguish them from actual explosive devices.

Was there any bright spots? well the security girl who handled my luggage thought I was a very patient man; the way I reacted after all what they did to me. The fact is I resigned to living with this inconvenience, even though it does not make me the least happy.

I am now at the San Paolo airport, I have more than eleven hours between my flights, and I am dying to get a couple of hours of sleep, but who ever design these waiting halls, designed them meticulously so no one can sleep on the seats; all the seats are single seats separated by metal rails, the rows are kept at a sufficient distance to each other, so one can't stretch his legs on the opposing seats, and everything is fastened well in its place so it can't be moved around, the only option I have is to sleep on the naked floor. There are massage booths and spa though, a bath and a massage might just be what I need to make it though without sleep.