Across the border from the Egyptian Sinai town of Taba is Elate, the posh Israeli tourist town on the Red Sea. If one approaches Taba from the Egyptian side, as our auto did, it appears like a mirage out of a fog bank that shrouds the sea cliffs from the vast desolation of the Sinai. I was unprepared for the sight of half-billion dollar casinos rising from the steep red rocks of the Red Sea coast. Only a few miles behind us, our van had sped past a herd of 20 or more wild camels nosing in the sparse vegetation along the road.

Taba is 300 kilometers South of Tel Aviv, and the same distance west of Cairo. My Arab guide and our driver had not told me any of this. Hani and Gammel had simply said they thought the best way to get into the occupied territories of Palestine was by way of Taba. It turned out they were right, but they neglected to tell me how far it was or that we were going to Gaza, by way of the Red Sea.

Hani pointed me at Egyptian customs. In Taba, none of the Egyptians spoke English, and none of them knew how to get to Gaza or how much it would cost. All were smiling and one told me the half-truth of the day, “America is the Greatest.” I told him it is the greatest and also the worst, and he did not understand a word I said.

At Arez gate in north Gaza, an Israeli girl soldier was the first of several to ask for my passport. After she had provided directions for the next stop, her companion, a tall pink-faced male under 20, said in the most polite tone I had yet to hear in Israel, “Excuse me sir, but do you mind if I ask why you would want to go there?”

It was as if he was asking why I would want to sleep in a pigsty, with complete sincerity. He simply did not regard the other side fit for human habitation and wondered why I would degrade myself by looking at it. I suddenly realized I wanted to be inside Gaza very badly…and away from the Israelis even worse. Their iciness toward life frightened me…I could begin to imagine being in one of their interrogation cells

The boy soldier was not the first to let me know he considered Palestinians subhuman. In Elate the morning before an Israeli cab driver first asked where I was going. When I told him he said, “You will never get in, they have closed all that area off on account of war…. There are lots of great things to see in Israel, why would you want to see those animals?” Not satisfied that I was convinced, the Israeli went on with his recital in total arrogance and without any hint of apology for his profession of racism. “Let me give you some advice, don’t go there. You have an American passport, how long do you think you will last in there alone…don’t you know what they think of Americans?”

The cabby had no doubt served his time in the military and was my first witness to the open, incredibly harsh racist bigotry that Israelis harbor toward the million Arabs. Like the man I will call Ahmad, my guide in Gaza, some of these Arabs are Christians. Even if you do not ask them, Israelis (some but not all by any means) do not mind telling you that they feel perfectly justified to imprison and even to kill a million Arabs in Gaza because they are “animals.”

A half mile long cement and razor wire gauntlet connects Israel to occupied Palestine on the north end of the Gaza Strip. I pulled my bag and carried my backpack from station to station and no one even looked at my luggage. In the 15 or so minutes it took to cross no mans land, not another person or auto crossed the border going either way.

I heard about three volleys of small arms fire, but I was later to learn this was a funeral salute to the Palestinian killed the previous night in the Jambalaya Refugee Camp. I was greeted in Gaza by the sounds of a funeral. I entered the world’s largest prison, with one million captured and incarcerated men, women and children.

We Hold These Truths Executive Director C. E. Carlson made a trip through Palestine to get a first hand view of the captors and the captives. His 9 part impressions: http://whtt.org/index.php?id=435