10 | OCTOBER 14 • 2021 

PURELY COMMENTARY

essay
My Travel to a ‘Forbidden’ Country
I

’m struggling to put into 
words how upset I am that 
as our Jewish professional 
in Windsor you visited an 
anti-Israel, antisemitic coun-
try,” a seasoned 
community 
member wrote 
to me after hear-
ing that I had 
recently visited 
Lebanon.
Let’s back-
track: As a 
Jew who previously lived in 
Israel, I always told myself 
that I would never put myself 
in danger by visiting one of 
Israel’s sworn enemies — that 
is, until I visited the Islamic 
Republic of Iran in 2018. 
Having made it through Iran 
in one piece, and in need of 
another adrenaline rush after 
a year and a half of COVID-19 
monotony, I signed up for a 
tour to Lebanon organized by 
a company that specializes in 
travel to unusual destinations.
It is illegal for Israeli and 
Lebanese citizens to visit each 
other’s countries, and arrivals 
bearing any sign of having 
visited Israel are sometimes 
refused entry to Lebanon. 
I held my breath as I went 
through passport control in 
Beirut, terrified that the bor-
der control officer would flag 
and take me away for ques-
tioning. 
As my fellow travelers 
became acquainted with one 
another, it turned out that 
most of us had, in fact, pre-
viously visited Israel, which 
in public we called in hushed 
tones “the I word.” I was 
astonished to discover that 
one of my fellow travelers, an 
unassuming 60-something-

year-old retired teacher, who I 
will call “Sally,” was the former 
president of her synagogue in 
upstate New York. 
Intrepid Sally mentioned to 
me without a hint of irony that 
she plans on signing up for 
the company’s Syria tour next 
year, and I saw on Facebook 
that she has subsequently vis-
ited Iraqi Kurdistan. Except 
for Sally, I was very careful not 
to reveal my true identity and 
profession.

HEZBOLLAH TERRITORY
Experiencing Hezbollah-
controlled territory in South 
Lebanon, near the border 
with Israel, took me back to 
my travels in Iran. The towns 
we drove through were alco-
hol-free; yellow Hezbollah 
and black Shia flags flapped in 
the wind; and posters of Iran’s 
Ayatollah Khomeini adorned 

the town squares. 
Hezbollah is classified as a 
foreign terrorist organization 
by the U.S. and is believed 
to have carried out the 1994 
bombing of the AMIA Jewish 
community building in 
Buenos Aires, which I have 
visited. Our tour of the move-
ment’s museum began with a 
15-minute propaganda film 
narrated by its leader, Hassan 
Nasrallah. We were then guid-
ed by an English-speaking 
Hezbollah member to various 
artistic installations displaying 
seized Israeli tanks entan-
gled in metal spiderwebs, an 
artistic homage to Nasrallah’s 
famous saying, “This Israel, 
and I promise, is more fragile 
than a spider’s web.”
The artist even constructed 
the symbolic tombstone of 
an Israeli soldier, titled “The 
Invader’s Grave,” not far from 

several rocket launchers that 
targeted northern Israel. 
While Sally complimented 
my Oscar-worthy poker face, 
she simply couldn’t help her-
self, and at the end of our 
three-hour tour dedicated to 
destroying Israel, asked our 
now bewildered guide: “Do 
you support a two-state solu-
tion?” 
On our way back to Beirut, 
we stopped to view Ein El 
Hilweh, Lebanon’s largest 
Palestinian refugee camp. 
Like the other Palestinian 
refugee camps in Lebanon, it 
is guarded at the entrance by 
the Lebanese army, who dare 
not enter. Despite living in 
the country for more than 70 
years, the country’s Palestinian 
refugees have still not been 
granted Lebanese citizenship.
Our Christian guide 
explained that Palestinians are 
denied Lebanese citizenship as 
per the wish of the late PLO 
Chairman Yasser Arafat, who 
believed that perpetual state-
lessness would preserve the 
Palestinian struggle. In addi-
tion, the government wished 
to preserve the demographics 
of Lebanon’s Christian minori-
ty, who comprise 30% of the 
population. 
The same guide told our tour 
group at the ancient city of 
Byblos that he had previously 
worked with Israelis in Turkey, 
but that he could get into seri-
ous trouble with the authori-
ties if he stayed in touch with 
them. He expressed a lifelong 
dream to visit Jerusalem and 
said that most Christians and 
Sunni Lebanese want Lebanon 
and Israel to make peace, but 
that the Shiite population is the 
main obstacle.

Dan Brotman

PHOTOS BY DAN BROTMAN

Dan Brotman 
at Hezbollah’s 
“museum” 
 
in Lebanon