Spook

A very popular game has emerged amongst my group of friends here. Its called "Guess the Spook" and it involves guessing who among the 30 or so students in my program are actually spies.

Basically there could be two options to look for... The first are the people who may be working for, or attempting to work for, an Intelligence Agency in the West. They would be here presumably to learn Arabic - but we've pretty much decided that there aren't any of these types here. Any Intelligence service who wants their analysts to learn solid Arabic would likely send them to a different locale... Damascus, Cairo, San'ah...

The other option, and the one we have decided is far more likely in this particular program, is the Shin Bet agent. The Shin Bet is Israel's domestic Intelligence service tasked with carrying out everything from recruiting Palestinian collaborators to assassinating prominent Palestinians. So again, with 30 people in our program it is actually likely that between 1 and 3 of the people many of us consider friends - and people with whom we've spent a great deal of time - are likely not who they say they are, and have been tasked with monitoring who is here and what we say. It's not illegal to be here, but its obvious that the Israelis would rather we were not here at all. (Including yesterday, when an IDF soldier at a checkpoint told S. a former US Marine, not to go to a nearby town because he will be kidnapped by "the animals"... this of course is ridiculous).

So we play this game - providing each other with reasons why we think so and so is a Spook, And while the other person is supposed to disagree and provide reasons to the contrary - we all just tend to laugh and agree that so and so actually IS a Spook.

P.S. Our favourite suspect is actually H., the super friendly Canadian. We joke about it because he has been trying to learn basic Hebrew from an "In-Flight Hebrew" quick, self-taught language program. He's trying this because he was allowed into Israel but not given a visa (again, ridiculous) and he thinks a little Hebrew might get him one, when he has an appointment in July at the Orwellian sounding Ministry of the Interior. His response when we bring it up: to pull out the collar of his shirt and mumble something quietly in Hebrew.