What was probably the most saddest thing
that I ever saw was the thirty people
that went across and then came
back home to Israel, they were bringing
all sorts of stuff back from Syria.
Gifts from the family or stuff,
they'd gone shopping because things were a
lot cheaper in Syria than they were in Israel.
And they were bringing back suits and
stuff like that and shoes and everything else.
Well, when you got to the Israeli side,
there would be a culling of this stuff.
First of all, if you had a suit because it's
got a thick seam there, they would take
a knife and cut the seam open to check
there was nothing in there.
They'd open suitcases, take a screw driver
and rip all the lining out of the suitcase
to see there was nothing in there.
Anything like hangers that were opaque,
wine or perfume bottles,
all would be rejected because
they could have something in there and
they'd just throw that all in a pile.
A guy would bring back four or five
pairs of socks, they'd lay them out,
take a picture of the socks so they
wouldn't be on the free market and try to
sell them on the market or anything like this.
And I was watching this and I walked over
to one of the Israeli captains who just
happened to be a guy from Markham, Ontario,
and I said, “Mark, what is going on?”
He said, “Fred, mind your own business.
You've got a job to do, you do it.
We'll do our job.” And you know,
it was hard to be able to accept that for
what it was and I know it's security and
I know all this but these were just poor
village people that weren't doing anybody
any harm but yet they,
about 25% of the stuff they
brought back was confiscated.