Our highlights in Israel

In my two previous posts I wrote about going down memory lane during our recent trip to Israel. I don’t want to go on and on about our holiday, so I’ll try to condense the rest of what we did during our 9 days here into one post of highlights.

While we were there, we of course visited Jerusalem. The Old City houses markets in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim quarters and above the markets/soukh there is a whole second level of the Old City where you can walk as well. We had lunch in a rooftop restaurant with view on the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock, we had coffee and home baked Käsekuchen in the courtyard of the German Lutheran church in the Christian quarter of the old city, we visited the hall where Jesus and his disciples were said to have held the last supper and we visited King David’s tomb. As a reminder that this wasn’t just another ‘regular’ beautiful historical city, we also saw evidence of more and more Jewish settlers trying to find a foothold in the Muslim quarter and more of a visible Israeli security presence as well, especially in the Muslim quarter near Damascus Gate. It was also unsettling to see Trump kippahs sold as souvenirs.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre (built over the sites where Jesus is said to have been crucified and buried) is always fascinating to me…

We went to the Western Wall but couldn’t get close as everything was closed off for a commemoration on Remembrance Day and for Israeli Independence Day the next day. Lots of security was around. There is always a lot of security around the Western Wall but this was really a step up.

While we as tourists can move easily and freely and I felt perfectly safe and fine, the situation still felt more tense than I ever remember before. Despite that, the Old City remains such a beautiful place.

We also met with a friend of my brother’s for dinner one evening who is a teacher and an activist. We ate at a lovely little Arab restaurant just across the border on the West Bank in Beit Jala which was deemed ‘safe’ for Israeli cars (Area C, explained via link at the end of this post)…

One of our reasons for coming was the wedding of the son of a distant cousin of ours. The bride is from Jewish Yemenite heritage and two days before the wedding there was a Yemenite celebration (with henna) that we attended near Tel Aviv. I was encouraged to also dress up for a small portion of the festivities, to dance along for the bride…

We drove down to the desert, partially along the the Dead Sea…

… and made a quick stop to briefly visit Masada again…

…and then got to the location of the desert wedding, where we also stayed the night in little huts. The wedding was awesome and fun, with beautiful views over a large desert crater…

The next day my brother took a bus to the south, we dropped Junior off at the airport where he flew to Istanbul on his own for a few days (and now he’s in Barcelona for another few days) while Mr E and I headed to the north.

After the desert, the North was more lush and green. We stayed in the Galilee and toured there and in the Golan Heights near the border with Syria. We also drove by a small portion of the ugly, depressing Berlin Wall-style wall between Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. We skipped the Western coast sites of Tabgha (where Jesus multiplied loaves and fish to feed many people), the mount of the Beatitudes (from Jesus’ sermon on the mount fame) and Capernaum (where some of the apostles are said to have lived) because we’d been there several times before but we did stop in Ein Gev on the Eastern coast of the lake, which I don’t recall ever having gone to before and it turns out is ‘just’ a holiday resort.

We stopped by the south side of the Lake of Galilee where the Jordan River emerges and which is also the site where many Christians go for baptisms (like John the Baptist baptized Jesus)…

We also stopped by Tiberias and took a look at where my mother had worked for a year the year before she and my father were married. She worked in the Scots Hospice library at the time (the two smaller pictures below on the left, my parents are the couple on the left in the first picture) which is now The Scots Hotel (picture on the right).

We had dinner nearby there at the lake with this view…

We visited the city in Tzfat (or Tsefat or Safed, whichever spelling tickles your fancy) which is the highest city in Israel and also boasts a booming artists colony. And yes, we ate a very nice Pita Falafel there, which I had to include in the pictures.

Once, many years ago, my father picked out a piece of art for me when we were in Tzfat, which is now one of my most prized possessions precisely because he handpicked it for me. It is the whole Book of Esther written in tiny letters, fitting into the image of a woman with a wide dress. As Mr E and I walked through Tzfat we found that the artist and the gallery are still there and he still paints Queen Esthers. In the pictures below, the first Queen Esther is the one I own, the Queen Esther on the right is for sale in the artist’s shop.

We also drove through the Golan Heights near the border with Syria. It’s a very beautiful area, with lots of nature and cows in fields but right near all that there are also warnings of landmines which is quite shocking amongst all that beauty. We also passed by a deserted little mosque filled with bullet holes. It’s a stark reminder of the very difficult political situation in the Middle East.

Being in Israel again for the first time in nine years brought home to me how tense everything can feel there, especially in Jerusalem, with security everywhere, more military checkpoints or at least observation posts than I remember and a stronger than ever presence of Israeli flags literally everywhere. Nationalism feels stronger than ever there and the divide feels bigger than ever to me. During all our visits in earlier years we could quite easily go to Bethlehem on the West Bank and we intended on doing so again this time around but were told that Israeli cars driving in the West Bank are at risk and that they aren’t insured there. As we were using my older brother’s car (on a side note: he’s become an avid birdwatcher over the years, as evidenced by a sticker on his car), we didn’t want to risk anything happening to it, so we never went.

I never consciously remember having to worry whether we were in an A, B or C area in the West Bank and yet with this visit, it was made clear we did need to worry about that. It feels like the tensions are stronger than ever and no peace in sight. Very sobering thought. Despite all that we did have a good and very interesting time and I’m sure we’ll be back again in due course.

So tired of conflict

Sickened by Israeli airstrikes killing so very many Palestinians. 227 dead the last I read, and apparently 150 of them are militants. That still leaves 77 civilians…

Sickened by thousands of Hamas rockets (last I read was 4000) fired on Israel which have killed 12 (and luckily no more due to the Israeli defence system).

Sickened by Israeli policies of evicting Palestinians and grabbing land which sparked the fighting going on in Israel now. The Israelis blame Palestinians for starting the fights but forget that they started this particular escalation by continued evictions and eviction threats. In Israel, eviction is not merely a legal matter, it is always political when Palestinians are concerned.

Sickened by Netanyahu. Sickened by Hamas. I understand where both sides are coming from but their actions sicken me nonetheless.

Sickened by the rise of antisemitism I am seeing yet again.

I understand a ceasefire will be coming within the next day or two. I fervently hope so!

Of course, once the ceasefire happens, nothing will change. People will be even more extreme and entrenched. Netanyahu will continue grabbing land trying to force Palestinians out and Hamas will continue rejecting recognition of Israel. There are no good guys in this scenario, only bad guys on both sides trying to gain the upper hand. Meanwhile, the people suffer. Living peacefully side by side, in two sovereign states, still feels as impossible as ever.

I’ve seen so much taking sides over this without nuance that I also want to add here that Palestine has never been a sovereign nation, the territory has always been occupied by so many nations throughout its complete history. From wikipedia: “[It] has been controlled by many kingdoms and powers, including Ancient Egypt, Persia, Alexander the Great and his successors, the Roman Empire, several Muslim dynasties, and the Crusaders. In modern times, the area was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, then the United Kingdom and since 1948 it has been divided into Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

I have seen this map of the more recent territorial history on my timeline a lot and came across a more nuanced version that I’d like to share here as well:

Source

In the grander scheme of things it’s really a many, many centuries old Arab – Western world conflict with so very many historical and religious influences at play. The solution is not easy and emotions over this are fraught but at some point the culmination of thousands of years of conflict must result in some common ground, right? Could it ever happen in my lifetime, I wonder?


MTA: I just listened to Sarah Silverman talk about her confusion and mixed feelings about the whole situation and it pretty much mirrors mine. Starting at 13:30 minutes…

(P.S. Considering switching off comments for this one as I don’t want an Israel – Palestine conflict being fought out right here on my blog. For now keeping it open but I’ll see how it goes. This also applies to Twitter where I will only allow the people I follow to comment).

Peace, when?

My heart breaks over the news coming out of Israel & the Palestinian territories right now. The Sheikh Jarrah situation was the spark that ignited the current violence, an unrest that is always simmering beneath the surface, and current Israeli extremist leadership (i.e. Netanyahu) only exacerbates an already volatile situation. My whole life, when I lived there and after, I have been wishing for peace and it still feels as far away as ever.

(Picture I took while visiting Israel and the West Bank in November of 2008).

More than 70 years of this conflict and no end in sight. When will it be enough?

Jerusalem

I can barely contain my anger over the idiot Trump move to open a US embassy in Jerusalem, and on the eve of Israeli independence too, which Palestinians call the ‘Nakba‘, a time when many Palestinians were displaced in 1948. There goes any remnant of hope for peace in Israel-Palestine… My thoughts are very much there today and in my birth-city of Jerusalem…

Because I am thinking of Jerusalem so much, several songs called ‘Jerusalem’ keep popping up in my head. Most of all the song ‘Jerusalem’ by Sinead O’Connor is playing in my mind… I so can relate to the intensity in this…

Or ‘Jerusalem’ by Dutch singer Anouk…

Or the (not brilliant but catchy) German entry for the Eurovision Song Contest back in 1999 called ‘Reise nach Jerusalem’ (‘Journey to Jerusalem’), sung in German and Turkish, with a little English thrown in and at the very end Hebrew (they came in 3rd that year)…

Or the song ‘Crusader’ by Chris de Burgh, which is a very iffy, one-sided heroic view of the Christians as heroes during the crusades of the Middle Ages. Despite that, I do love the musicality of this song and the repeated line “Jersualem is lost” feels very fitting…

And there’s the Jerusalem song I remember best from my childhood, called Yerushalayim shel Zahav (Jerusalem of Gold)…

Despite the unholy alliance between Trump and Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, I still try to cling to hope for peace for Jerusalem and the region, even though a peaceful two-state solution feels very very far away right now…

Jerusalem 2008

Will there ever be true peace one day in Jerusalem?

Oh, Jerusalem…

… what will happen now after Trump’s latest narrow-minded, selfish move? My heart goes out to you!

I love Jerusalem. I was born there, have lived there, have gone to school there, have visited many times after living there. It has always been a problematic city, home to the holiest sites of the 3 large monotheistic religions. The picture on the left was taken from behind/on the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (where Jesus is said to have been crucified). The picture on the right is of the Dome of the Rock (where Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven) with the holy Western Wall in front of it (part of the Jewish Second Temple which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD).

And a few more pictures: my dad with my son at the Western Wall, my kids with cousins inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the closest we could get to the Dome during our 2008 visit, which was closed to non-Muslim visitors due to the whole conflict (I had visited there before, however, when there was more hope for peace).

These sites are very close to each other; the Holy Sepulchre is only about a 10 minute walk away from the Western Wall and the Western Wall is literally part of the outer wall of the piece of land on which the Al Aqsa Mosque & Dome of the Rock are situated. The sites and the feelings they evoke are so closely tied together, there is a real reason why the question of the status of Jerusalem is a very difficult one in the whole peace process… I just hope that what Donald Trump has done now won’t endanger a process that is already extremely delicate and fragile as is… I just hope that it will remain possible to walk peacefully through the Old City…

IMG_0916

… and that this bumbling fool of an American president hasn’t destroyed too much with his short-sighted foreign ‘policy’. If I were a religious person I’d be praying harder than ever for peace in Jerusalem now.