My First Trip to Israel (November, 2000 – text)

 

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Flying to Tel Aviv

 

I arrived in Tel Aviv at approximately 18:00 Israel time (everyone in Israel has been in the military so all time is quoted as military time). The flight was on schedule and this was Saturday the 18th of November. The trip was uneventful save for a cancellation of the first leg of the trip going from Cleveland to Toronto. This resulted in my flying nonstop from Toronto [Starting at midnight (EST)] to Tel Aviv rather than via Frankfurt. During the long delay in Cleveland there was lots of discussion with Canadians on the Presidential election (U.S., see cartoon, left). A man with a German accent yelled me for "lecturing" to the waiting passengers. The flight plan was similar regardless of the change in itinerary. I left from Toronto at midnight.

 

The clouds (and night) finally cleared over Turkey. Very dry land. Sparsely populated. Some mountains with what looks like snow on them. Lots of water earlier in the flight. While everyone was still sleeping I had peeked out the window over what must have been the North Atlantic (before being yelled at by another passenger that the light coming in the window was blinding). It had been very exciting to be over open water/ocean. It was now very exciting to then be almost beyond Turkey and over the Mediterranean.

 

We fly over Tel Aviv towards our landing. The city is bustling with skyscrapers jutting up, here and there, towards the sky. The airport is a confusing jumble of Western and what I assume to be Middle Eastern influences. My first ever passport stamping as I head towards baggage claim! Customs was almost a nonevent. I expected endless harassing but the most interesting (and, in fact, only) interaction was a question from the X-ray guy over what were those round, hand grenade-like objects in my carry-on luggage (A: tangerines). It was explained to me that I could not bring live plant material into the country.

 

Tel Aviv is subtropical. I was expecting desert. The city is cosmopolitan. I was expecting middle-age New York Jews (although there are plenty who go by that description, too). It is more like Montreal (where I was in June) than Boston (where I was in October). Also, I was expecting a dangerous, right-           wing, militaristic embattlement, but instead I am in the midst of a liberal, youngish, vibrant seemingly not a care in the world Western Mediterranean culture. Oddly, I'm not yet sure I like it, though that probably has to do with my natural tendency to prefer the country over the city.

 

My hotel room overlooks the sea though it is an older hotel and not directly on the beach (I can live with that as well as the ceilings that are barely taller than I am). This morning (Sunday) I walked for an hour or so on the beach. The sun is shining and there isn't a cloud in the sky. Temps are in the 70s. It was too hot and I was overdressed. No one has a sun hat quite like mine. Many were swimming in the clear, clean water. A nice way to start one's day.

In terms of conflicts, so far I've only seen one uzi (at the airport) and a few of what I take to be military attack helicopters either prowling the country's border (i.e., the beach) or heading back from or towards trouble (or perhaps they were 5:00 O'clock--oops, 17:00--News copters painted a drab olive). This afternoon we head for Jerusalem for our first phage meeting. My host says that there is nothing to be concerned about. I look forward to seeing if he's right.

 

Jerusalem

 

First of all, what bus? What missiles? Now on to the diary:

 

This morning, for reasons clearly beyond my control or desire I am up at 6:15. This is before breakfast even starts and nearly four hours before I meet my host for today's adventure. At least, finally, I've slept through the night.

Yesterday (Sunday) was my first full day in Jerusalem and my first day of "work". After leaving my host's office we went out to eat on falafel. This was a pocket of deep-fried something with you-fill-it-up with vegetables and sauces. This turned these pita-based "sandwiches" into what I like to call two-handed meals. That is, ultimately one has an enormous pile of food that requires two hands to hold and which is eaten by shoving one's face deeply into the pile and then chowing down. Food is everywhere. Though clearly overly caloric (few in Tel Aviv appear truly skinny), for the first time in my life I feel that I am surrounded by people who instinctively eat exactly the way I do. As yet I am uncertain whether or not this is a good thing.

 

Continuing on this food theme, breakfast at the hotel was amazing. There was the usual fruit and toast and eggs (very runny) and oatmeal (even runnier) and dried cereal (not runny--but who eats dried cereal on vacation?... oops, I mean while one is hard at working doing service to one's profession...). But there was also a collection of salted fish and fried vegetables. Again, without question, overly caloric, but great stuff (as I apparently suspend my typically vegan ways... and I should add that the calories appear to be mostly olive oil--olove olive oil). All my life I've avoided eating this typical Jewish morning fish stuff, but now I find myself looking forward to breakfast precisely because those poor, formerly swimming thingies will be on the menu. Finally, food-wise, the bread is wonderful. Clearly my losing weight on this trip is not going to be an option (though I am now running on the beach, a little, and walking the stairs up and down from my 8th-floor hotel room).

 

The work was in West Jerusalem, barely. Yes, I said I would be doing just about everything in Tel Aviv. Apparently I lied (and at least I wasn't in Gaza). We went to a spot, next to a building built by my host's father, that overlooked the old walled city. Very tiny, occupying a hill in the midst of a very hilly city. The old city sits just inside E. Jerusalem which my host explains is also just inside the West Bank. The West Bank is the West Bank of the Jordan River. The Jordan, along with a line east of the Sea of Galilee makes up the Eastern border of the Northern half of Israel. The East Bank *is* Jordan, except at and North of the Sea of Galilee, which was taken from Syria and is called the Golan Heights (today we tried to hang out in a spa somewhere up in the Golan Heights, right on the border with Syria, but the spa closed early for the evening--not enough customers lately, apparently... can't imagine why not!).

 

The Golan Heights is of military importance and was taken from Syria in the 1967 war. The West Bank was taken from Jordan also in 1967. From the Sea of Galilee fresh water is pumped out by Israel. What is not pumped out continues to flow in the Jordan to inland basin we known as the Dead Sea.

 

North and South of Jerusalem are Palestinian enclaves where, currently, the Palestinians are trapped because these enclaves, though completely surrounded by Israel, have been closed off from Israel for security reasons. If one draws a line from enclave to enclave then one is making a rough sketch of the border of the West Bank, which Israel is (was?) in the process of carving out of itself to form the Palestinian homeland, a.k.a., the West Bank of the Jordan.

 

The West Bank does not reach the Mediterranean sea, but the Gaza strip – a small, literally strip of land no more than 5 miles wide (E-W) and 40 miles long (N-S) – does. The Gaza Strip is South of Tel Aviv perhaps 50 miles and is completely surrounded by Israel, except for the sea. There is a 40-50 mile distance through Israel proper from the Gaza strip to the West Bank and Israel plans to create a below ground-level road for Palestinians use that connects the Gaza strip to the West Bank (not tunnel – think sitting ducks for Israeli snipers should it come to that).

 

The drainage to the Dead Sea in historical times has been desert. Apparently for west of the West Bank (which is Israel) this has not been so. All during the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem there are trees, all of which have been planted by Israel (over the past 50 years). Apparently Israel for 400 years was occupied by the Ottoman Turks who systematically deforested Israel before losing Israel to Britian during WWI. So Israel's wasteland represents a desertified ecological disaster of man's making (like our own cape cod, or the Amazon basin in a decade or two). The West Bank could very well also be man-made desert, but that probably can't be completely blamed on those pesky Turks. Anyway, fortunately the Israelis had the foresight to undergo a massive tree planting campaign during the 1950s. But this is still a very (very) damaged ecosystem (and, in general, a very ecologically damaged country – it's literally a mess).

 

We climb from sea level in Tel Aviv upwards to Jerusalem. Too many cars in Israel, many of which are joining us on this shared trip to that holy city. Along the road up to Jerusalem there are wrecks of armored vehicles that are remnants of the Israeli war of independence (1948). War is very much on the surface of this land, all the time.

 

Jerusalem is an amazing city built on a series of hills surrounding the old city. All of the buildings are built of local stone and it looks like one is entering another century, if not another world.

 

In West Jerusalem there are trees, all planted in the past 100 years that the city has been expanding. But as one reaches the old city, on the dividing line between East and West Jerusalem, between Israel proper and the West Bank, the trees are gone, giving rise to desert.  So atop a small hill, overlooking West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem, one foot in each, we see former forest bordering former desert, Israel bordering Palestine, and in the middle is a square mile, at the top of a hill, of perhaps the most religiously significant site on Earth.

Rather than heading down there we went to the conference room and spent three hours talking phage ecology. Gotta keep one's priorities straight.

 

North of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem

 

This apparently was the day (Monday) that 20 missiles were fired into the Gaza strip. We didn't learn of this until late at night (~9:00) and then only because my host received a call from his business partner while we drove back to Tel Aviv from Northern Israel.

 

My host drives a small Toyota AWD thingy. Kind of an as-small-as-it-gets SUV. He says that it is great for parking in Tel Aviv. And based on my limited experience in this town, I can say that having a vehicle that can drive over curbs with ease while fitting into tight spaces is an important parking consideration. I predict an absolute disaster, however, since the local government (gasp!) has banned sidewalk parking and intends to enforce this ban soon. This should get very interesting.

As I noted yesterday my day started at 6:15 (today I made it to 6:30 – bloody noisy city traffic!). I ate a leisurely breakfast and had time for a walk along the beach after breakfast (this morning, to escape the heat of the day, I did this before breakfast). Upon returning from the beach there was my host ready to go, so we went.

 

In Tel Aviv - indeed, in all of Israel that I've seen so far - everybody has a cell phone and is constantly talking into it. In my host's Toyota his cell phone charger is mounted right next to my left knee. Periodically, no matter where we are, the cell phone goes off. Apparently its microphone is quite sensitive because he presses a button and with his head at least a meter away from the phone declares "hello" (they also say "bye" and "OK" on a regular basis; only once he knows who he is talking to does he say "Shalom"). After saying hello he then says "Ken" or "Kien". This I figured must mean "yes" and I was right (the only other thing that I now know in Hebrew is "Toe-da" which means thank you).

 

These conversations are usually in Hebrew and I'm trying to at least listen to them to get a feel for the sounds and rhythms. Every now and then a English speaker will call (as happened later in the day with news of the missile attack - that phone call coming from Florida) and this is startling. So such is life with cheap, literally cross-country cellular phone access and partners in Florida who worry about missile attacks.

 

We started our trip by driving up rt. 2 which is along the Mediterranean. I quickly dubbed this road the MCH or Mediterranean Coast Highway since it reminded me of California's Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). A major difference was that this MCH also reminded me of California's I-5 since it was multilaned and very crowded with traffic. Again, cars, cars, cars everywhere. In fact, a major reason that Israel is having so much trouble with the Palestinians has to do with Israel having become a nation, apparently, of affluent, cell-phone using, car obsessed "weenies" who have much less tolerance for protracted military games then they used to (the Palestinians, some anyway, apparently don't feel as though they have anything to lose in these struggles; and I, who never served in the military can only exempt myself from weenie status on the basis of not owning a cell phone, and such is a very slim line between weenidom and lack there of).

 

Regardless, our first stop was to visit the remains of a number of past ultimately failed military ventures - The Romans, the Byzantines, the crusaders, and the Turks - all in a place called Caesarea. These are fascinating ruins that date back at least 2,000 years. Stone, then as now, appears to be the building material of choice. This was a massive harbor, now mostly under water (the harbor buildings, that is), and a city fed by an equally ambitious aqueduct. In terms of structures, the most impressive, though, is the amphitheater which is still used for concerts!

 

But in terms of impressions, the best was sitting in a cafe just off the water of the former harbor sipping an ice coffee. I couldn't help but think of how much my mother, who loved ice coffee and would have loved traveling to Israel and beyond, might have enjoyed sitting in a cafe looking out at the sea, surrounded by Roman (etc.) ruins, sipping ice coffee while basking in the quiet that only a near-absence of tourists can produce. Ah, weenidom.

 

We headed back to the car for our trip north, and passed on our way through town after town, some of which were Israeli Arab, another which was a Druze village, and of course a number of Jewish towns, villages, and cities. All are built of stone or, mostly, concrete. If the place is hilly (and often it is) then the buildings are built up and down the hills, all over the place. The feel of the architecture is simultaneously first world and third world, and almost always a crowded, jumbled mess.

 

It is first-world-like because there is a real affluence here. The houses are large, well-built, and usually reasonably well kept. However, the third-

Trip North Intinerary:   Cesarea - Roman aquaduct, Roman hippodrome Port: Roman, Byzantine, Crusaders, Ottoman Roman amphitheater   Carmel mountain slopes - Druze villages, and pine forest.   Haifa: Carmel vista onto port and city.   Jezreel valley.   Nazareth (largest Israeli-Arab town): lunch.   Tiberias, see of Galilee, view of Golan heights across the lake.   Jordan river (Baptizing point).   Hamat Gader (El Hama) - Israeli/Syrian/Jordanian border, Hot sulphur springs, and crocodiles farm - was closed.   Back to Tiberias hot springs (who are still holding on to your bathing suit as a memento from the world renowned phage ecologist's historical visit).   Back via Beth She'an valley, Afula, Hadera.

world look is there despite those attributes and comes, I think, from three sources or impressions.

 

First, what is here is perhaps how third-world nations would build their buildings if only they could afford to, but jumbled and everywhere. Israel appears to be undergoing an uncontrolled population explosion. An affluent population explosion, yes, but a population explosion nonetheless. Kind of like LA, but with even less room, water, or planning.

 

The second thing is that the houses are often empty shells. In rural Mexico I was often struck by the number of structures that seemed to have been started but never quite finished, as if money or will had been lost part way through the building process. The explanation of the empty buildings in these Israeli towns, however, was quite different: There simply were not enough buildings and construction was rampant, a seemingly near-constant adding of housing to what to my eye was already a fully saturated countryside.

 

The third reason these towns seemed third worldish was that Israelis don't seem to be much into landscaping. This I'm sure is in part due to the difficulties of landscaping in such a dry place, but here this lack of landscaping seems to be taken to its logical extreme. Imagine if after constructing a house, building, or road the unpaved spaces were left as eroding piles of dirt rather than planted with grass or, better, allowed to return, with help, to their natural, vegetated state. Israelis, apparently, and despite the planting of trees on the way to Jerusalem, have only recently recognized the aesthetic of the not-recently strip-mined look. Mind you, I'm as anti lawn as anybody, but even I have trouble positively appreciating this anti-landscaping extreme. One is left with the impression of an environment not just disturbed, but recently bull dozed. Perhaps this is just honesty, but it doesn't leave me terribly impressed.

Our drive up, past Caesarea, included a meal in Nazareth based on humus, pita, and olive oil (again, yes, being a weenie can be a good, and yummy, thing). Awesome, in a clean, otherwise empty (a common current problem) restaurant overlooking the hills and valleys of one of those first world/third world Israeli towns. Then, our hunger totally sated, we drove down, well below sea level, to the shore of the sea of Galilee...

 

 

 

Jaffa

 

Another cloudless day. A run on the beach before breakfast and after breakfast it is so hot that I put on the air conditioner. The beach in front of the hotel runs from the marina to the North down to a rocky section to the South. This being well past the Israel beach season and oh so "cold" (and yet so warm I use the A/C) the beach is fairly empty.

 

My first two days the water is nearly mirror smooth. I pass 25-50 people also walking, or running along the water line. The waves are small. This is a modest beach by European standards, which is not to say that is lacking in size. Most walkers are fully dressed in shirts, pants, and shoes, though hats are rare. The men who are wearing bathing suits are generally wearing the European style of relatively small bikini, except for the older men whose suits are even smaller, or perhaps they themselves are relatively larger. A few are very tanned as though they live on the beach, and perhaps they do. Every one is in their twenties or older. The children are all in school.

 

The women, like the men, range in age from their twenties to much older. Their dress ranges from thongs and topless to bikinis to much more modest, mostly the latter. Some are walking, few are running. Like the men, there seems to be a direct correlation between amount of clothing and amount of walking, though the variance in male dress is larger. For whatever reason, the men are running in bathing suits, tanned and strong, while the ladies divide up into bathing-suited tanners and swimmers and fully dressed walkers and runners.

 

The beach is preserved by numerous jetties and breakwaters. The water is shallow. The swimmers are all either middle aged and older or youngish females in bikinis. But mostly we are walkers and runners streaming up and down the wet sand of the shore, dodging the waves whether shoed or not, and carefully climbing over the jetties as we come to them.

 

To the south the beach stops abruptly at a long jetty. Afterward is a sea wall. The water is universally clean with little of the trash I'm used to seeing on American Beaches. Perhaps the storms are less strong here and the tendency to litter the beach while walking along it less compelling. The helicopters continue to fly by. My host tells me that planes, not helicopters patrol the coast. To the north is the municipal airport. To the south is the city of Jaffa. Further south (some 50 miles) is the Gaza strip.

 

Completing my dawning realization that my manner and culture are far more similar to the manner and culture in Tel Aviv than they ever have been in the states, my host does not make it to his office until 1:00 in the afternoon. I come by soon after, and my briefcase is searched in the lobby for weapons or bombs. I'm more cooperative than the guard wants me to be.

 

In the office I type at the computer while a steady stream of Russian speakers comes and goes. Commerce with Russia, this is the name of my host's game, with Russian Jews helping to form the bond between Israel and Russia. For decades if not centuries the Jews were second-class citizens in Russia. Now they are business people with Israeli citizenship, academics, industrious workers, or alcoholics living on the beach.

 

Three or four O'clock we head out for my tour of Jaffa. We hop in the Toyota and drive a mile or two South, just beyond the beach. Jaffa is the original settlement here. Tel Aviv is the modern city, only about a century old. Jaffa is an ancient harbor, and still a small harbor for pleasure boaters and fishermen.

 

Most of the architecture dates from the 19th century and the earlier Turkish occupation. The buildings are stone and the streets and passageways narrow. At last we have good landscaping. Beautiful trees, grass, and other plants among the buildings. I guess the older the site the better the gardens. Perhaps Israelis take the long view, that 25, 50, 100 years without adequate landscaping is nothing over a 5000 year history.

 

The old city, at least the quarter we visit, sitting right next to the harbor, is an artist's colony. Again, though not completely empty, there are few tourists, though many newlyweds getting their wedding pictures taken. We pass one couple, she in overly cleavaged splendor, he already with fishing pole in hand, a photographer buzzing about recording their posed first moments of matrimony. Overhead, every ten minutes, another military helicopter passes over heading south.

 

We return to the car and drive through a flea market that has probably been in the same place doing the same thing for centuries. The buildings are all run down. The stuff vast in its variety. One street is nothing but restaurant supplies. Want a stainless steel sink or a giant mixer? You have come to the right place.

 

We stop for a sorbet a bit farther on. I order plum and chocolate (yes, apparently I am a closet chocaholic), a two-scoop cone. Delicious. We go to my host's apartment. He parks in a well-secured underground lot beneath his building. The apartment has three bedrooms and 2.5 baths. Very well appointed, but only about 1200 square feet. This is a modest, absurdly expensive, Tel Aviv domicile.

 

We decide to watch a rented DVD that evening, already a week overdue (I'm preoccupying, I guess) but first head across the street for dinner. The place we visit has Heineken on tap. I order an olive, tomato sauce, and eggplant pasta dish. All my life I've hated eggplant. Here I can't get enough of it. The vegetables are all very fresh, the food wonderful. This meal is as good as any I've eaten. $35 for the two of us. Expensive by Israel standards.

 

We return to The Perfect Storm (the DVD, hardly the weather, though perhaps a metaphor for the conflict?). The movie is very disappointing (though I do adore Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, or however one spells that last name). Just as they leave to go back to sea the automatic screen of the projection TV mysteriously retracts and won't unretract. There is no manual override. I joke that the Palestinians have surely developed an anti-DVD device calculated to bring the Israeli's to their knees. We project the movie on the wall. To reduce the glare from the street I lower his blast-door-like electronic shade (that spans about twenty-feet of window and is as black as the night sky). This is our anti-Palestinian-anti-DVD device.

 

I meet his family. All are female, and all are beautiful including photos I'm shown of his sister and the niece we pass while waiting in a traffic jam. I joke that he is the only ugly one of the bunch. I tell him to quit smoking.

 

On the way back to my hotel we encounter a road block and police. A common occurrence, apparently. Some bombs are encountered and, with luck, diffused before they explode, though who knows what this incident was about. There are also bomb threats and mistakes on the part of a thankfully overly cautious security force. We pass an odd mob of people and agitated police. One person is on the ground, face down. I have no idea what is going on.

 

I return to my hotel, run up eight flights of stairs, but my legs have had it by the sixth. Tomorrow I'm on to Ben Gurion University in the Negev to schmooze and give a seminar on phage ecology.

 

Ben Gurion and the Negev

 

I suppose that waiting three-quarters of an hour and paying six dollars isn't too much to exchange $100 for Israeli currency (shekels). That was 280 to 100. I have no idea how poor an exchange rate that is. I really don't care (though current exchange rate, 2/18/2001, is 408 to 100, either I was robbed or the past few months have not been kind to the shekel). Just two more days here, not that I'm in a hurry to leave, just that I don't perceive a need for more money over that time.

My host seems happy with my efforts on his company's behalf, as well as our socializing. That is good. I am here to please. Tonight I will spend some of my Israeli money buying him a drink.

 

After the bank I catch a cab to the train station. 16 Shekels, 20 with the tip to go from my hotel to the train station. That's not too bad. More than $5, but less than $10.

 

I'm at the station. First I mispronounce my destination. 23 Shekels for the train ticket (one way), which isn't too bad for a one hour-plus train ride. The station is full of people. It is only the tourist destinations that are mostly empty. The train station is full of pretty women in combat fatigues with combat rifles (good looking males, too, I suppose). These solders do not appear to be on duty, just commuting to or from work, or heading to or from whatever town they live in. Very fascinating for an American to see. In American, only criminals, police, and Texans walk around train stations carrying guns.

 

The station sits next to a busy highway. All of the highways are busy. Israel, except for the tourist spots, is very busy. My busy cab driver wanted to know, "Who is better for Israel, Bush or Clinton?" I answered that I honestly didn't know. "Why does Bush seem so stupid?" Why questions are always the most difficult to answer.

 

I look around from the bench I sit on at the train station. People are boarding my train. I stand up, and again look around. This time I spy a lost wallet on the bench next to mine. Could this be bomb? A terrorist plant containing miniature explosives waiting in ambush?

I go to find a person in charge. He doesn't speak English. I don't speak Hebrew. I take my own wallet out of my pocket, lay it on the stairs in front of this guy, and then walk away from it. He understands and I guide him to the wallet. No explosion. I board my train. I hope it is the right train.

 

Agriculture is very much the name of the game as we head south. Here is a dry land of rolling hills and endless agriculture. Fro a while there were olive groves and citrus. But now less so. More plowed fields. This is the beginning of the growing season for most of the annually planted crops.

 

Suddenly we are passing acres of olive groves and other trees that I can’t identify. The ground surrounded these trees is all but devoid of life, the like the nurseries that spray herbicide between trees to keep the weeds down, only here there are no weeds between trees, anywhere. I imagine that it is a lack of spraying (of water) plus recent disruption (plowing or bull dozing) that has kept the non-tree plant life at bay. Is this reforestation? Are the trees I can’t identify eucalyptus?

The erosion in places is severe. What on earth is going on here? And I thought that I didn’t understand Ohio.

 

Suddenly an oasis and we’re here at the Be’er Sheva train station. Housing. Industry. And trash everywhere.

 

Stepping off the train in Be’er Sheva ("one of the oldest cities in the world") I quickly have an opportunity to employ a hard-earned hiking lesson: If you are lost and you know someone is looking for you, whatever else you do, don’t move! I was unfortunate to have learned this lesson while hiking in the New Hampshire’s Presidential range. They almost made me pay for the helicopter that they sent out to look for me. That is, until I convinced the rangers that they had been at least as incompetent as I had been. Regardless, my mistake in Be’er Sheva was that there were two train stations, and naturally I had gotten off at the older, more-northern station rather than the downtown station where my newest host was waiting to meet me.

 

The most interesting thing about the train station that I had mistakenly arrived at was an almost total absence of spoken or written English. At last, I was off the beaten path and completely on my own. Fortunately, all I needed to do or communicate was a big fat nothing, and about 20 min later my host shows up to rescue me. As I had expected, when I didn’t get off at the “right” train station he assumed, after a search, that I must have gotten off at the “wrong” train station. Yeeech.

 

The Ben Gurion University of the Negev was about a mile from the older train station (versus about five from the newer station). There I was treated to my honorarium, met with a physicist with an interest in phage ecology, and then was on to lunch. Lunch was wonderful as usual and the conversation interesting. Clearly what this group is doing and what I do is very similar. At 2:00 I gave my seminar. Perhaps 5% of the audience appreciated and understood it, but that’s better than no one. At least one person was profoundly impressed with the implications of employing microorganisms as ecological models.

 

Later that evening it was time to return to Tel Aviv. This we did via Jerusalem, where we attended a 100,000 -person-strong right-wing (very hawkish) rally. So, yes, there I was demonstrating (or, at least strolling among demonstrators) in the holy city. Perhaps the most interesting observation, other than that this was a very loud and emotional demonstration, was that regardless I felt fairly comfortable in this crowd of fellow Jews, even if I didn’t completely buy into the staging of loud, emotional, right-wing rallies. 

 

Of interest were the Israeli soldiers. Rather than serving to control the crowd, security instead faced outward, protecting the rally with automatic weaponry at the ready. Israeli’s take their security very seriously (earlier that day, though, was the Hadera bus bombing).

 

That evening, back in Tel Aviv, I switched hosts then went out for a second, huge dinner and a little exploration of the Israeli bar scene. Tel Aviv is one wild and crazy town, and this was only Wednesday! By midnight I was in bed, asleep.

 

End of my First Trip to Israel

 

Thursday, my last full day in Israel. I was up at 6:30 and on the beach by 7:00. I only made it about the length of the beach in a run (more like a slow jog). My legs, by this time, had had it, between the stairs to my eighth-story hotel room and my daily walk/run on the beach. I had my last hotel breakfast of the trip and then spent my remaining paid-for time in the internet cafe, before being picked up by host at 11:00. First some business, then picking up an additional passenger, then on, again, to Jerusalem.

The day in Jerusalem ended with our second meeting, but first a tour of the old, walled city. Very old and interesting (and littered—what’s a little trash compared to thousands of year’s of history?). The highlight was the Western Wall. Who would have believed that I would ever get there? The impression is simultaneously of an edifice that is both much larger and much smaller than expected. A remarkable, and, as usual, relatively empty place. Only the very orthodox were there. Security going in, also as usual, was tight. What a wonderful and moving place, nonetheless, though I won’t claim any deep-felt religious insights or feelings.

 

More food, more touring, a nap in the car while my host drove around and explored Jerusalem. A very expensive neighborhood with amazing landscaping, and then our own little meeting. By 10:30 (22:30) I was back in Tel Aviv, getting ready for bed. Then it was up at 2:30 to catch a 5:30 flight to Frankfurt, where I now am sitting awaiting takeoff.

 

Link to my first trip to Slovenia

 

 

Link to my first trip to Slovenia