With Apologies to Hunter S.

In the lead-up to the most recent Iraq War, President Bush announced a plan to use a program of "shock and awe” to cripple the Iraqi will to resist. The term comes from a military strategy paper published by the Command and Control Research Program (CCRP) in 1996. The point, the authors write, is to:

...so overload an adversary's perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at the tactical and strategic levels… To achieve this outcome, Rapid Dominance must control the operational environment and through that dominance, control what the adversary perceives, understands, and knows, as well as control or regulate what is not perceived, understood or known.

Naomi Klein also deals with the concept of "shock" in her latest book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which traces the not-terribly-democratic, not-terribly-gradual ascent of neoliberal ideology over the past four decades. Here "shock" serves to rearrange both geopolitical and economic landscapes.

Which is all by way of introducing the fact that it’s 7AM Saturday morning, I’m lying in bed spent and fighting back the vomit, waiting for the shower to free up. Then I’m gasping as the cold water hits, trying unsuccessfully to put together the past 48 hours of guns, alcohol, religion, sex and graves since we landed in Tel Aviv, and, yeah, it all feels like a bit of a shock.

Our flight to Israel is delayed 12 hours (due, we are told, to President Bush’s need to clear the airspace for his own arrival), so our group of 36 starts bonding over mini-bottles of wine and overpriced airport Heineken. Thus, I find myself not entirely on my toes for the slightly terrifying security interrogation during check-in: You never learned Hebrew? What was the last Jewish holiday you celebrated with your family, ‘Thomas Ward Frampton’? Really? And what do you call the piece of matzoh that gets hidden? Apparently I did better than the poor girls that got taken into the side-room. (On the Israeli side, though, we go through customs like it’s nothing. I guess Birthright’s got what they call “suction” on The Wire).

On the plane I sit next to an ultraorthodox rabbi, David. Actually, I sit next to a very attractive young woman, but David compels her to switch seats with him because he can’t sit next to the woman he’s been seated with. There’s a brief moment when I think David and a posse of other ultraorthodox guys are about to blow up the plane when they simultaneously break for the cockpit, but someone explains to me that they’re just putting together a minyan for prayer. But we end up hitting it off pretty well, all things considered, and he invites me to his place for shabbat after the trip.

We arrive at the hotel in Jerusalem in the very early morning. It occurs to me that despite spending the past 18 months working every day in hotels with UNITE-HERE, this will be the first time I’ve stayed as a hotel guest since I started union organizing. I pick up a towel and drop in on the ground, just because I can. Odd that hanging out in a guest room without worrying a boss is going to swing by feels like just as much a culture shock as, you know, being in Israel. (The room attendants, bussers, and bartenders at our hotel, incidentally, are all Israeli Arabs. The room attendants work on piecemeal – about $2.50 for a checkout room, less for an occupied one – which doesn’t compare too favorably to the $107.20 per sixteen-room-day that union room attendants currently make in Chicago, particularly given that the cost of living isn’t too much lower in Israel).

After a few hours of napping we’re taken to an overlook of Jerusalem. The vista is really staggering: the walls of the Old City, the Dome of the Rock, the gravestones along the Mount of Olives. We drink wine, read from Genesis, and are welcomed home. “This is not a tour, it’s a pilgrimage... this is your birthright.” To the east there’s another wall in the distance cutting across the hilltops, one that kind of gives lie to the posters around town promoting “40 Years of a Reunited Jerusalem,” but we don’t really dwell on it.

Then to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City for a few hours of tour. Again, fantastic. It so happens, though, that they’re inducting a new crop of paratroopers into the army at the base of the Western Wall that evening, so there are hundreds upon hundreds of 18-year-olds running around with guns. During lunch we’re told not to allowed past the border to the Muslim Quarter, that it’s not safe. Of course, I wander off and try and check out the Muslim Quarter, but I end up somehow getting lost in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (which I gather is part of the Christian Quarter).

Back to the hotel where we have a professional lecturer come in to deliver a presentation on the contemporary political situation. I don’t know what to say. The guy who delivered the lecture was fucking charming (British accents, tons of jokes, owned the room), and he’s so likable you almost don’t realize that the chat he’s giving is peppered with video of incoming Katyusha rockets and anecdotes about murdered friends, with no reference to settlements, cluster bombs, or collective punishment. Even the typically aloof 18-year-old girls with the “Rich Bitch” t-shirts seem engaged. He’s really, really good.

After dinner we go out to an Israeli club (conspicuously lacking in Israelis), where there’s a disastrous amount of drinking. It’s like summer camp with an open bar. All sorts of decadence and depravity transpire that, for the sake of propriety, I’m going to have to leave inferred. I think I end up in a pitch-black room in the basement of the hotel, though that may have been another night. We’re up in a few hours to do it again.

The second day continues much like the first, with an already-depleted crew staggering around Mount Herzl (where early Zionists, most important Israeli politicians, and military casualties are buried). It’s really more of a park than a cemetery, and I really like the beautiful tree-lined winding through hilly gravesites. Way nicer than Arlington National Cemetery. “These are kids your age, just like you, who died for Israel. This one here, with the Phillies helmet at the foot, he’s an American who volunteered to fight in Lebanon, to stop the rockets. This is Yitzhak Rabin. This one is my friend Roei, another tour guide who died when his tank was hit. He could have been a medic when he was called back up, but he wanted to drive the tank. Sometimes we have to fight for peace.”

In the evening we get dressed up in our Friday best. We load into the bus back to the Jewish Quarter, and as the sun goes down we enter the completely packed plaza of the Western Wall. There are thousands of worshippers – mostly ultraorthodox in either wide-brimmed or tall, furry black hats– bowing, crying, chanting, singing, shouting. There are also a lot of 18-year-olds with guns, even if the paratroopers are gone. Unlike what you might get at synagogue on Friday night, there isn’t any one shabbat prayer service: everyone pretty much does there own thing, with different leaders setting up their own tables and others crowding around. It’s really one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen. I wander around, overwhelmed by it all, trying to figure out if I find religious fervor more impressive or disquieting. I think about writing a prayer and sticking it in the cracks of the stone, but it doesn’t feel right at all.

Afterwards we walk back as a group to the hotel. Jerusalem largely shuts down once shabbat comes in, and driving is prohibited for the religious. Back at the hotel there’s more sex and alcohol, and even a couple hours sleep. This isn’t a tour, it’s a pilgrimage... this is our birthright.