My friend's wife was accepted to a PhD program at McGill University in Montreal.
They decided to move to Canada with their two children at about the same time that I was offered a fellowship at Princeton and decided to move with my family to New Jersey for a year.
Hoping to rent out our apartments while we're away, we both posted ads on the most popular website in Israel.
I received about five calls a day and found a tenant within a couple of weeks.
My friend received only three calls in four weeks, and none of the people who called came to look at his flat.
A few days ago he removed his ad from the website and posted a new one, only this time he changed his name from Hussein to Rami. Rami is an ethnically indeterminate name -- it can be either Jewish or Palestinian -- but there are no Jews called Hussein.
Within three days "Rami' received about thirty phone calls, and six people came to look at the flat. He expects to sign a lease with one of them tomorrow.
In Israel, if you are a Palestinian and want to rent a flat, at times, to misquote Arthur Miller, you have to live without your name.
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