The Best Strangers in the World by Ari Shapiro

Author:Ari Shapiro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-02-24T00:00:00+00:00

9

The Third Rail of Journalism

I couldn’t figure out why the TV show seemed so familiar. It was a ten-part miniseries on HBO called Our Boys. The drama was subtitled in Hebrew and Arabic, one of the first programs that HBO picked up in a foreign language. I watched it before bed night after night in Washington, DC, in the summer of 2019, feeling a strange sense that I had heard the story before.

The series begins with three Israeli teenagers being kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian militants. In retaliation, Jewish extremists kidnap and murder a Palestinian teenager. By the time the show took us into the Palestinian family’s mourning tent, it hit me. I’d been in that tent. I hadn’t known the show was based on a true story—one that I’d covered.

In 2014, the death of sixteen-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir was one of the sparks that ignited a war between Israel and Gaza. My colleague Emily Harris covered the conflict from Gaza, while I flew from my base in London to report from the Israeli side of the border.

I went to the Abu Khdeir family’s mourning tent in East Jerusalem, because I’d heard that a bus full of sympathetic Jews was planning to show up, sit with the family, and offer condolences. I wondered how the encounter would go and wanted to see whether people would be able to build a bridge across this canyon of religion, identity, and mutual suspicion. When I arrived, I was surprised to find there weren’t many other reporters there. To me, this seemed like an obvious draw for journalists looking for a break from the dark chronicle of rocks thrown and rockets fired.

Mohammed’s uncle, Walid, told me he didn’t want the visitors’ sympathy. “We have decided not to receive any Israelis,” he said. He felt like people were trying to distort his family’s image, to use their story for politics, and he didn’t want to be a part of their game.

I recognized that he was talking about me, the American journalist, as much as the Israeli visitors. I was there searching for a ray of hope on the eve of war—a moment that could demonstrate something other than fear, resentment, and pain. But the family was feeling more angry than hopeful. The narrative I had in mind wasn’t a story Walid was looking to tell.

I often tell journalism students that if they finish a reporting project with exactly the story they had set out to find, something has gone wrong. The best stories should surprise us; they should defy our expectations and veer in directions we weren’t expecting. Part of our challenge in life—and all the more so in journalism—is to let go of our preconceived narratives, remove our blinders, and see what’s actually in front of us. As a reporter, I do my research, make a plan, then throw the plan out the window to adapt to the reality of a situation.

The reality of this situation was that the bus wasn’t showing up. Not good for my story, but the Abu Khdeir family was relieved.

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