“We don’t Have to Have a Reason…”

Alright, Wilson. I’m writing this to you in something of a state of exhaustion. I just completed my seven-day bicycle ride around Arizona and am now in Los Angeles. I came here in order to check out Hollywood and see if I can possibly get autographs from, and hopefully some tips from, some of my favorite filmmakers about things I can do with my book and some other ideas bouncing around in my head. I don’t maintain many illusions about actually meeting these guys personally, except maybe for an autograph and a handshake from one or two of them with some luck, but I thought just rooting around meeting the receptionists at their film companies might be kind of cool, and possibly productive. I thought Los Angeles would make a good final destination for my bicycle ride, at any rate. Also, my Beit Din is out here, and I thought I might check in with those guys if they have any time. Anyway, I’ve been here for a couple of days, and I haven’t been able to resist riding all over LA seeing everything there is to see. Wilson, if you ever get a chance, you just have to tour new cities on a bicycle. You see things you’d never see otherwise.

But anyway, this week will be a busy week, and I really need to get this next post out to you, so I am going to try to write it to you after riding 30 miles around Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and Hollywood. Luckily I am just out to recount the facts of my interactions with the Consulate of Israel in Mexico, which is located in Mexico City.

Remember, I had decided to try one more time to see what could be done about the whole Israel situation and got accepted to a language school in Jerusalem, but in order to go, I would need a visa. Now as time goes on and I get older, the internet just doesn’t seem to work for me. I send e-mails, nobody responds. I send chats, nobody responds. I leave voice mails, nobody gets back with me. This counts for life in general. But particularly anything related to electronics wants to go weird. And given all the problems I have had with Israel, how great do you think my chances are of getting anywhere just by the regular 21st century methods? That’s right, Wilson. Not much. However, having lived for two years in Mexico, I never did get to see Mexico City, and I’d especially wanted to see Teotihuacan, the pyramids there. So I arranged a little trip, and I scheduled to visit the consulate while I was there.

So I went to Mexico City, stayed in an Airbnb, did some touring, and dropped by the consulate according to a scheduled appointment. When I got there, I wasn’t allowed inside. Some security guy came out and asked me what I was wanting, I told him I wanted to investigate getting a student visa. He told me I shold just gather my documents and come back, and there would be no problem. He was sure to ask me why I didn’t just go to Israel as a tourist and do whatever I wanted with a visa while I was there. I didn’t want to say, “I am a deportee…I can’t.” I can’t remember my answer. But it came off to me like he…or the spirit that controlled him…wanted to bring my problems to the forefront. Anyway, I thanked him and went about my trip.

Back in Guadalajara I gathered all the documents required by the consulate according to the website: a picture of my passport, three bank statements, health insurance verification, verification that my health insurance coverss COVID, the acceptance letter from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and verification that I had applied for housing in a dormitory with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. About 90 pages of documents in total with my financial records included. I then headed back to Mexico City later according to my second appointment, this time with an expectation that something would happen. I mean, I had taken a trip previously to verify everything should be okay, and they would have told me if there were going to be some roblem, right, Wilson?

This time a Mexican security guy came out and told me that they don’t have visas. Now nothing stopped these guys from letting me schedule an appointment. Notice on the above e-mail response that I stated in my appointment application that I was requesting visa services. But apparently they just weren’t giving out visas on the day of my appointment. I was upset. I was also becoming aware that everything about my interactions with the government of Israel was going to have to be recorded. Nobody would believe how bad this would go if I didn’t. And, well Wilson, I am writing this post to you, so these recordings are coming in handy. Let me share this one with you of me talking to the Mexican guard who told me they weren’t giving out visas, and he didn’t know why, after I had scheduled an appointment and paid for a bus to Mexico City and an Airbnb in order to go to the appointment that I had successfully scheduled for visa services.

So, with that, I paid more money to go back home. Excellent service, right?

Anyway, back at home I tried something extremely daring. I tried calling them. Again, I recorded the call. I originally thought it would be fun to show everybody how Israeli consulates just don’t answer phone calls. I wish I had recorded all of my attempts to call the Israeli Consulate in Madrid that were never answered. I also wish I had recorded all of my attempts to call the Israeli consulate in Belgrade that were never answered. And you know what, Wilson? When I recorded the call, they answered!

It’s a funny thing how that happens. Just recently I was out shopping at a hardware store, and upon making my purchase, the register stopped working. The employee begged me to look at the register to confirm it was not working. Apparently, this employee had constant problems with the register, but whenever she would call her manager for help with a broken register, the thing would work! And of course her manager would be frustrated to be called out to fix a register that this employee could simply could not make function, but was of course perfectly functional! So yeah, the employee begged me to look at the register and confirm that it was frozen, because if I didn’t look at it, the thing would of course magically start to work as soon as her manager arrived.

I was all too happy to provide the verification. I know how this sort of thing goes, Wilson. My electronic devices hate me too, and they pull all kinds of crazy crap when nobody else is looking. My presence worked, and I left with my purchase after the manager’s intervention.

So now that I recorded the call, of course the Consulate would actually answer the phone! But what they said was no less strange. There was apparently a strike of some bureacrats in Israel, so their consulate couldn’t issue any visas for actual lack of stamps! I’m not kidding. I’ll share the video!

So yeah, once again, just like with the consulates in Europe in 2021, when Jonathan decides to go to Israel, Israel just shuts down. Can this be real, Wilson? Or am I just living in a warped version of Neo’s Matrix? Or is God writing a very unusual story in the life of Jonathan our protagonist? You be the judge.

Anyway, they told me to check back weekly to see when I could come back when they had stamps. Eventually I got the go ahead.

So, I made another appointment, paid for another bus ticket, paid for another Airbnb, and headed to the consulate one more time!

Now I think I didn’t mention that I had sent them by e-mail a copy of my application packet. I’ll show you the proof.

Now sadly, Wilson, when you get inside the consulate you can’t have any electronic devices on you. So you are going to have to trust what I tell you about this next bit. When I got there, they looked at my paper documents that I had in my hand and told me that I needed to include my birth certificate and the passports of my parents. This requirement does not exist on the website. And I had sent them my documents per e-mail, and nobody told me there would be any problems or additional requirements that were not listed anywhere else.

What could I do, Wilson? I mentioned as politely as I could that these new documents were not listed on the website. The employee just looked at me and smiled. She then told me, “don’t worry, just come back with the documents, and you’ll get your visa right there. I promise.”

So, I paid some more money to extend my stay in Mexico City, I collected the documents from my parents, and made another appointment to return.

Until now we have a case of incompetent bureacratic runaround. But on this final appointment, things start to get really weird. Again, I can’t give you a recording of what happened inside. I’m sure if I could have recorded what happened in there I would have left with a visa. But when people aren’t on tape, they’ll say very strange things.

So when I get inside, I don’t deal with an employee. The Consul himself is standing there. I’m putting in an application for a student visa with the Consul himself. Now do you remember way back when I started these posts I told you that after my very first, and difficult, attempt to get a visa to Israel in 2018, I left with the Consul himself of the Consulate of Israel in Houston, Texas staring at me with hate in his eyes? And don’t forget the principle that Satan’s servants are going to find success because of their deals and rise to the top of their organizations.

So there I was with the Consul himself. And he starts asking me the trillion questions. Think back to when I was harassed and strip searched at the border of Israel with Jordan. They started by asking me a trillion questions until they could dig up something that would let them cause me problems. Think also about when I was deported from the Ben Gurion Aiport. The border guard started with the fifty million questions, asking me everything he could until basically forcing me to confess that on my tourist visit to my rabbi friend one of the things we would discuss was the concept of converting to Judaism. That was what he needed to go crazy. And don’t forget my lawyer telling me, “they wanted me to send them this, but I already sent it…they want me to tell them that, but I already told them…”

When Satan is going to come after you, he is going to start with the fifty million questions, Wilson. He will ask you questions until he can find something to have a problem with. So I gave this guy my documents, and he asks me why I want to learn Hebrew. Now when I applied for my visa to study in Germany in the 90s, nobody asked me why I wanted to study in Germany. The question is, why does this guy want to go to Germany? Okay, he wants to study there. Also, in 2018 when I applied for my visa to study at the ulpan in Netanya, nobody asked me why I wanted to study Hebrew. The question was, why does this guy want to come to Israel? To study Hebrew. And finally, when I went down to Mexico to study Spanish, nobody asked me why I wanted to study Spanish. But this guy was going to ask me questions until he found something to have a problem with.

Now a funny thing happened. While I was getting interrogated by this guy, this young Asian chick came up and handed in her documents for an aplication for a student visa. They granted her the visa for four months. Nobody asked her any questions. Just like when I applied for a visa to Germany in the 90s. Just like when I applied for a visa to Israel in 2018. Likewise a Mexican dude handed them his documents for a student visa and walked away with it, no questions asked, while I was standing there for a half an hour being interrogated by the Consul himself.

Yes, Wilson, eventually I was forced to confess that I was converting to Judaism with a conversion court in Los Angeles. He asked me everything. He then told me to write down my story for him, and to be sure that I mentioned in writing that I was converting to Judaism. I complied. Then he disappeared behind his window for a monent and returned with a letter for me.

Yes, Wilson, my application for a student visa was denied. The Consul told me verbally that there were two reasons. The first was that he noticed that I had written “void” on previous visas to Israel. He said the visas in my passport were not mine, but they were the property of the government of Israel, and I had defaced Israeli government property.

Can you imagine, Wilson, if an Israeli were to apply for a visa to the USA, and the American consulate employee said to him, “we see here that you spilled coffee on a previos visa to the USA in your passport. Therefore you cannot come to the USA. Your visa is denied. Have fun never coming to America under any cirumstances.”

So the problem with that excuse for not giving me a visa is that it has no remedy. I mean, if I defaced Israeli government property, how about paying a fine or something? Like, something I could actually do something about, right? But, the remedy for having defaced an old visa from Israel was to get all future visas denied? And if that were the reason, he would not have needed to give me the fifty trillion questions. He could have just looked at my passport and denied my visa application on that basis. But no. This was just something to add on, like when a cop adds superfluous charges to an arrest report just to make sure someone gets charged and convicted of something, anything at all.

But then he told me the the skinny. He said, “we don’t grant visas to people who are converting to Judaism.” Now at the Ben Gurion Airport the guy deported me as an illegal immigration risk because because he thought there was a possibility that I would potentially convert to Judaism in Israel. But I had already made the decision to convert to Judaism in the United States. Now we find that not only is thinking about converting to Judaism a problem for going to Israel, but actualy converting to Judaism outside of Israel is a problem for going to Israel.

I looked at the letter and commented that none of these reasons were written on the denial letter. He replied, “We don’t have to have a reason.”

I asked him if there were any law against going to Israel while converting to Judaism. He said, “No.”

See, in my previous posts to you, Wilson, I was able to demonstrate the ludicrous situation of a border agent deporting me for being an illegal immigration risk with an appellate court confirming his good judgment to deport me beause I was a legal immigration risk. I had the reasons and the explanations in writing. But the Filth Pig in charge of this new anti-Jonathan-going-to-Israel operation knew that putting things in writing made him vulnerable, so he just left the reason off of the letter.

What the letter did have was a couple of clickable links to find out about how to appeal the decision. Of course the guy gave me a piece of paper. So I couldn’t click on the links. The only thing I had was an e-mail address. So I sent off an e-mail requesting to appeal the denial…to what I think is the exact same court that told me I was justly deported as an illegal immigration risk because I could be interpreted to be a legal immigration risk.

So it remains to be seen what will happen with this appellate court that I am applying to, Wilson. I will let yo know how it goes. But right now I have to bike across town to get some other stuff done and get back to the hostel I am staying at. So I will update you on how things go with the saga as soon as I can. I’m just too pooped to continue at the moment. Thanks for listening. I’m sure the story will get even more interesting with time. Talk to you soon.