Crazy Israeli Cab Driver #1,320,837

Last night, I had to take a cab since it was late and the buses had stopped. Now I should first point out that even the act of getting into a cab for me has become so fraught with injustice and indignity that I shy away from it as much as I can, due to the knowledge that, no matter how much strength I muster up, I know that these cab drivers are going to take me for the proverbial ride. That is, when they hear my American accent, they hit the special button on their meter that charges me double what someone with an Israeli accent will get.

Anyway, I wandered over to the cab stand (actually the worst place to get a cab, since the cab drivers ascribe to the idea of "power in numbers," and collectively agree to screw you over), and asked for a cab to Bat Galim, about 10 minutes away from where we were. One of the drivers stepped forward and offered to take me. Just as I was about to get in, the friend I was with remembered something, and held me over for about 5 minutes, while the cab driver impatiently (i.e. constantly reminded me of his presence every 15 seconds) waited.

In hindsight, I realized that this action of making the cab driver wait around for me was the best thing I could have done: it showed him (inadvertently, in fact) that I was going to preempt his rip-off-of-a-cab-ride by wasting as much of his not-very-expensive time as I felt like. And, considering he probably wouldn't be getting any fares that night, he was forced to wait for me. I should point out that I did not mean to be so rude, but I think it at least invoked some amount of respect in the man's heart.

So it was possibly this imagined respect, or some recent traumatic event in his life, that this cab driver immediately began telling me some of his old war stories in a very funny half-English, half-Hebrew (his English was arguably worse than my Hebrew...which is saying something). When I say "war stories," I don't just mean old yarns; the man started telling me about his life as an Israeli commando in Lebanon and elsewhere.

If I understood him correctly, he was trained in anti-terrorist activities, which he incorrectly (and probably a little ironically) translated as "terrorism." He told me stories about being in Beirut in '82 ("I got shot in leg. Here." Me: "Oh wow. That must have been terrible to remove..." Cab driver: "No. It is still there. It does not hurt so much. Only when it gets cold out."), about being in Lebanon multiple times after that ("We landed by sea, and there was a spy who saw us. You know what ambush is? They surround us, and 8 of our men died"), and his time in Italy, ("I dressed like real Italian, with sunglasses and suit. I studied his life. This Arab, driving in Mercedes around Italy. He killed many Jews. He planned the attacks. One day, he went to turn on his car, and BOOM. I put a bomb under the car.").

But he kept coming back to the fact that he didn't feel bad for doing what he did, because he is "protecting Jews." He put it this way: "Here in Israel, we are not just protecting other Israelis. We protect Jews in America. And Jews in Europe. We protect Jews everywhere."

Anyway, it was a pretty intense conversation which I realized could only happen in a cab in Israel. It made me think about how I hope to give back to Israel, somehow, in my life. Then, I considered the fact that, thinking me an American tourist, he though I might enjoy a few made-up war stories that sounded bad ass. Though I honestly doubt it.

And, in the end, I didn't really mind paying him the 50 shekels for the cab ride.

Michael