Israel, Days 6-7: Haifa and Kibbutz Gonen

So, since Thursday was my last blog, I need to put an update. Friday night we had a hotel with internet, but I didn't post a blog because by the time we were done with class, I literally couldn't keep my eyes open. Saturday and Sunday, we were at places that didn't have internet connections (wireless anyways), and today, I have to sit in the dining hall to find some free internet.

So I'll give an update on all the happenings as of late, and direct you to my Facebook page to look at the last three photo albums I've added (Day 6, Days 7&8, and Day 9).

On Saturday, we spent the day making our way from Tel Aviv to Haifa. Normally, the drive from Tel Aviv to Haifa would take about 45 minutes, but we took a detour to the east on our way there. First, we stopped in Nazareth (a surprisingly small and unimpressive village), where we talked to a man named Rassan, a Sufi sheikh who started a center for peace and coexistence in a town where hostilities, especially between Christians and Muslims have hit a peak.

Nazareth, a formerly entirely Christian town started slowly declining in its Christian population, has started to become more and more Muslim. As the Muslims move in, they begin to create hostilities with Christians; small acts of violence started in the mid-90's, but reached a peak during the second intifada in 2004. Rassan told us a story about his son. Shortly after he and his partner, a Christian minister from the Basilica of Annunciation, founded their peace center, Rassan's family began to experience attacks for being "traitors of the Palestinian cause" even though his family is Palestinian.

One day, during the height of the intifada, Rassan's son was brutally beaten until he went into a coma for two weeks. The incredible tension that has built up between the Christians and the Muslims has even created inter-Muslim fighting because they see people who work for peace as "collaborators" with the Israelis who want to squash the Palestinian cause... But the vast (and very silent) majority of Muslims do not agree that Muslims who want peace are traitors--because many of them are for peace.

In fact, many of them are interested in a solution as soon as possible. I was surprised to hear from both Palestinians that we've talked with, that they want to see a SINGLE state solution, preferably an ISRAELI state... I was blown away when I heard this from the mouths of Palestinians. Their explanation of this view is is that the interim government is too corrupt and they'd rather live under the Israeli government, then their own, corrupt government.

This sounds like a happy solution to the conflict, but not so. Israel wants nothing to do with the West Bank. Israel, founded as a Jewish state, does not want to annex the West Bank because there are enough Muslims living in the West Bank that the balance of Jewish to Muslim citizens inside the state of Israel would swing towards the Muslims, who would then constitute the majority in Israel. The Israeli's fear is that if this happens, the populous will vote more Muslims into parliament and the Israelis will go to being a suppressed minority in what was supposed to be their own country.

This is what makes this struggle so difficult. There are so many different eccentricities to every detail of society, that when people that don't live here try to help solve the conflict, there are aspects that get overlooked and there is an upheaval of discontent to each agreement that is made. Of course there is no perfect solution that will make everyone happy, but there is a solution that could make the most people happy, and it's just a matter of achieving that goal.

After Nazareth we headed to Moshav Nahalal (from here out Nahalal). A Moshav is much like a kibbutz, but less communal. At Nahalal, there are 75 families that live in the same area (that has now become a town called Nahalal). The organization of the city is in the shape of an oval, with a center plot of land that has an oval shaped road that goes around it, and each family with an equal plot of land that surrounds the oval. In the center there are all the essential services for the Moshav: post office, supermarket, schools, the dairy, small shops, and the town hall.

Around the outside of the road, every family has their home built next to the road, with their 12.5 acre plot of land extending out behind their homes in a wedge shape; this makes for an incredible overhead view. :)

Moshav Nahalal as seen from the air.

We had the best lunch I have EVER had in my entire life, and it was vegetarian surprisingly. It was a 3 course meal that was served at Nahalal by a man who was generous enough to share his home with us. His wife cooked for us and he told us his story. In short, he's the fifth generation of his family to live in Nahalal (he's in his 60's) and the sixth and seventh generations now live there as well.

Nahalal has a wide variety of different flowers, fruit trees, and wonderful other products of all different varieties. They sell their produce collectively outside of Nahalal all across Israel, whatever one contributes to be sold, they will receive in return after the produce has been sold. It's essentially a capitalist kibbutz.

While in Haifa, we spent most of our time visiting the Baha'i center for the Baha'i religion. A religion that I've found fits all my beliefs, almost exactly. It's a religion that follows the teachings of all the major religions throughout the world. It recognizes all the prophets from Moses to Mohammed, and also recognizes it's own prophets: the Bab, and Baha'u'llah, prophets who heard messages from God saying that humans should recognize the oneness of humanity, the equality of everyone, men, women, all races etc., it recognizes Baha'u'llah's teachings about humanity, and the idea of service to mankind as a central part of religion.

The Baha'is have a SPECTACULAR garden located on Mount Carmel in Haifa, the gardens descend down from the top of the mountain to the Mediterranean Sea. Filled with different varieties of flower, trees, and shrubs, the gardens are a place of peace and reflection for people of all faiths, especially the Baha'is. The Baha'is are a religion of peace and promote the equality of all. There are roughly 6 million Baha'i people world wide. The Baha'i religion started in Iran, but the Baha'is were badly persecuted during the Iranian revolution in 1979 and have since left in great numbers for Africa and South America. Although the gardens were closed due to the rain making the limestone paths incredibly slippery, we were able to get some great pictures of the gardens.

The next day, we spent the day driving up the coast to Rosh HaNikra, the part of the border between Lebanon and Israel that touches the Mediterranean. At this point, there are giant cliffs of chalk that touch the ocean, and for thousands of years, the sea has slowly been eroding the chalk away from the cliffs and has opened large grottoes, or caves, in the side of the mountain. Today the grottoes are a big tourist attraction, that we visited.

After Rosh HaNikra, we drove along the Lebanese border to Kibbutz Gonen, a small kibbutz on the border with Syria... it's located in the 'finger' of Israel, the farthest norther tip of Israel that extends partly into Lebanon and partly into Syria. We spent our night there and awoke the next day to learn more about kibbutz living and troubles on the border with Syria.

Sorry I didn't get a post up sooner, and I'm missing pictures, but the internet access is very spotty to non existence in the kibbutzes. If you would like to see some of the 300 pictures I took in the past 4 days, you can go to my Facebook page to see them:  http://www.facebook.com/danielgerdes2011/photos

Israel, Day 5: Tel Aviv-Jaffa

This has been a great a great day so far. We were allowed to sleep in until 10am today. It was glorious. I feel so rested that after I post this I think I'm going to go out on an adventure in Tel Aviv! :D

The highlight of the day was our discussion at the group meeting this evening. We were talking about the things that we've noticed and have been thinking about since our last group discussion (three days ago) and we got onto the topic of the Palestinian perspective and how we all agree that it has been lost on our trip. We have a WONDERFUL tour guide named Amir. He's an Israeli native who grew up in Jerusalem on a kibbutz. His family helped fight in the war of independence in 1948 and he has been a part of the Labor party ever since he could vote. Although we all love Amir, his perspective is blatantly biased towards the Israeli side of every issue. Although it's great to hear the Israeli's side to every event, we would rather have that side also told with the opposing (or not so opposing) view point from the Palestinians.

There is a nice quality to learning about a topic and you hear about it from more than one (or even two) sides. I feel like we're incredibly heavy on the Israeli side and it makes it extremely difficult to sift through all the information without opposing view points. The other day, we talked with a Palestinian Christian named Ibrihim. He explained to us that many Palestinians don't believe what most of the Arab countries believe, he thinks that there should be a peaceful end to the conflict, and he believes that Israel should be the one and only state that exists on the land.

To many of you, this may seem shocking, "How could a Palestinian want Israel to be the only state that prevails out of the two state conflict that exists today?!" Well it's actually a relatively easy but unrealized answer. Ibrihim is Christian, a very small minority in the Israel and the rest of the Middle East these days. The Christians are all pushing for either an Arab nationalist state or the State of Israel to prevail out of the conflict. Christians know they will be heavily persecuted if Palestine prevails and an Islamic republic is installed, because under an Islamic republic, Islam is the one and only allowable religion. Therefore, if a secular Arab state or a Jewish state is created or kept in power, the Christians will be left largely alone and they will most likely not be affected.

Beautiful view of a mosque which sits roughly 20 feet from the Mediterranean Sea.

The rest of the day today besides discussing the Palestinian side of the conflict was spent touring Tel Aviv and the old city of Jaffa (they are now considered to be the same city). The first site (and only) site we stopped at in Tel Aviv was the site where Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a religious Jewish zealot. Rabin was the first Prime Minister of Israel to open talks directly with Yasser Arafat. He was willing to make concessions and deal directly with Arafat to create a solid and lasting peace with the Palestinian people. Shortly after his announcement of planned peace talks at the Tel Aviv government square, Rabin was shot in the back three times by a radical religious Jew who was mad at Rabin for even suggesting negotiating territory away with the Palestinians.

Memorial for Yitzhak Rabin.

After we left the site of Rabin's assassination, we headed to the old city of Jaffa, and toured the currently-being-revitalized port and old city district in Jaffa. There is a beautiful contrast of old and new in Jaffa. Many old buildings that have fallen deep into disrepair are brought back from the brink of devastation and given new life by wealthy real estate moguls who want to revitalize the 'tired city of Jaffa'. We stopped at two places in the old city that really stood out for me. We stopped at the shop of a Yemenite Jew who immigrated from Yemen right before WWII. This man, Ben Zion David makes Yemeni jewelry, mainly out of silver, using generations old tools and techniques that have been handed down through his family since the 1700s. After observing some silversmith-ing at work, we moved on to a very special theater. Its name is Please Touch, its a theater company in which all the actors are blind, deaf, or both. This theater was one of the first things in the dilapidated old port district of Jaffa that is now being beautifully renovated. This theater company has captured region wide appraisal for it's incredible contribution to the community, and the world of artwork--where no disabilities can prevent you from creating your own kind of are.

David Ben Zion, the Yemenite silversmith who showed us his craft by creating a piece of jewelry in 10 minutes. It was incredible!

The theater company's review by the Guardian: "It's a test of theater itself, the way good work can communicate across the boundaries of darkness and silence."

That's all I have for this day. Tomorrow we'll be heading to Haifa, the 'working city' in Israel! Stay tuned!

Israel, Day 3: Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Har Gillo (Israeli 'Settlement')

Today was a very interesting day. We spent most of our day in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

We arrived at the border checkpoint--run by Israelis to keep Israelis out, not to keep Palestinians out-- and the first thing we saw was this sign:

This meant that our main tour guide, Amir, couldn't go with us because he has an Israeli passport; and although Nurith (my professor) was a citizen of Israel, she is now an American citizen with an American passport. If the guards at the gate chose to question her, they could have but because she didn't say anything and they didn't hear her accent, she was able to pass through the checkpoint just fine.

When we arrived in Bethlehem, we met our tour guide from Palestine where she took us to the Church of the Holy Nativity, one of the most well known and holy sites for Christians. We arrived in the Nativity plaza (if anyone has ever seen the Christmas programs from Bethlehem on TV or the internet, this is the place you've seen on TV). My professor told us that the last time she was there, there was a huge Hamas protest in the Nativity plaza right after they were there (there were no such protests while we were there--thankfully we have had a quite uneventful trip so far).

This door is incredibly small. Roughly 3 feet 9 inches. There used to be a door  there where the archway was (you might be able to see it filled in with stone).

This door replaced the old archway which allowed animals to enter the church, but under the rule of the British, the door was changed when the British wanted to disallow animals from entering the church. When you enter the church, you can see the ancient Byzantine floors that were found by the British under their rule, they did research on the age and ancient use tiles and mosaic in the building. There are now pieces of the mosaic floor that can be seen when opening the wooden hatches on the floor.

The church of the nativity is also built over what is believed to be the birth place of Jesus Christ... unlike what many people believe, the inn and stable that Mary and Joseph were supposed to have tried to stay in were actually a cave. We saw the site that is believed to be where Mary gave birth to Jesus, and we also saw where historians believed the manger was located.

The supposed birth place of Jesus, the star is said to show the location of Mary when she gave birth to Jesus.

The supposed location of Jesus' manger is on the right side, where the large slab of marble is.

After we visited the Church of the Nativity, we talked with a Palestinian Christian what he thinks about the conflict and his ideas for the solution. He believed, like many other Palestinians, that there should be a one state solution so that everyone can live in the same place, instead of being a crazy mess.

We then moved onto talk at a house on a settlement in Jerusalem. It just so happens that when we got inside, he told us that the house was his! It was  a total shock, and we didn't know what to do or to ask... we didn't want to offend our tour guide and we didn't want to be seen as unknowing either, so there were long awkward silences pauses,but the time was definitely worth the discussion.

Just behind this group of houses (owned by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchy) is Har Gillo, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. This is where the house we visited was located.

                                                                                                                                                                                              The next day, we gathered an hour later, after packing and began to leave the city. We first took a short tour of the government hill with a tour around the supreme court and the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament). Then we worked our way down the road to Tel Aviv by learning about the battles that were fought over the road from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv in the war for independence. We stopped at some of the battle grounds to find out about the different struggles and how it was possible for a small Israeli population of 600,000 people (men women, and children) to defeat 6 mighty Arab armies: Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria.

I'll throw another blog post up tomorrow depending on how much we end up doing tomorrow... we may get a leisure day tomorrow! Thanks again for reading!