So, I thought I would make a list, since lists are always fun, of all the things I miss the most from home and all the things that I will miss about Israel.

Things I miss about Canada

-My husband.  My cats.  My Mom and Dad, sisters and the kids.

-My couch. My microwave, my oven, my bed, my TV.

-Having my own bathroom that isn’t filled with clumps of curly black hair.  Living with someone who cleans up after himself (and even me!  Oh, the thought) and turns lights off and takes out the garbage.  Knowing that when I buy something it will not go missing.

-English.  I miss being able to read the labels on the things I am buying.

-the food.  I miss cheese with meat!!  I miss pork.  I miss feeding Craig because it gives me an excuse to make really nice meals.  Feeding myself I just get lazy and eat the same thing every damn day.

Things I will miss about Israel

-a constant stream of people dropping by uninvited and unannounced.  It does get in the way of doing homework, but it makes me feel important   I like that people come to me for advise, for help with their homework, and it sure does break up the monotony of sitting at a computer screen.

-adventure.  Never knowing where I will go, who I will meet, what I will learn or see.  It is so easy to get around Israel: when in my life will I ever be able to wake up in the morning and decided to hop on a bus to Jerusalem?

Sofy infront of her family's home

-the hospitality.  People have been so eager to welcome me into their homes, someone is always making me dinner, giving me gifts, sharing their lives with me.  I have never, ever, lived in a place where so many people were so concerned with taking care of me, reaching out to me, and showing me affection.

Kittens!

-CATS!  Wild cats everywhere.  I love it.  It is now the time of year where kittens are weaning and exploring the world: there are 3 litters near my building and I just can’t get enough of watching them.

BBQ: all the salads and sauces

-the food.  Salads, sauces, falafel, bbq’d meat, shakshuka, and whatever the heck all that other tasty stuff is called.  I love it.  I know I can get it at home, but I don’t think it will be as good.  We’ll see.

-Hebrew.  I kind of like not understanding what people say most of the time.  I made a great realization that language is only a little part of understanding people on a day to day basis: I’m impressed by how often I can guess what is going on.  And I like that it is so easy to tune people out when you can’t understand them: that irritating young girl on the train, people trying to sell you something.  It is like having my own little bubble.  A bubble of ignorance.

Things I won’t miss about Israel

-the littering: you can’t go anywhere in Israel without seeing garbage: on every street corner, in people’s backyards, by the side of the road, even in the grocery store you will see people eating food and dumping the wrappers.  I can never get over this.  People are willing to kill and to die for this land but they aren’t willing to use a garbage can.

Sandstorm, out my window

-Sandstorms.  The wind comes in off the desert and it is so hot and dry and the sand gets everywhere.  It chokes me, makes me feel dried out, and it covers everything like a years worth of dust.

-Racist, ignorant, inconsiderate, self-righteous people.  I have met more than a few of these.  Many of them have been American, the rest Israeli.

-while the sense of community is what makes people here so welcoming and so friendly, it also results in this nosey-ness, invasive, attitude that drives me crazy.  So many of my friends here are being watched all the time by their peers to make sure they don’t cross this line of acceptable behaviour.  It reminds me of small town life, except that it exists in cities with thousands of people (doesn’t help that everyone is related).

IDF testing bombs in the Negev (taken from my bedroom window)

gun

-living in a military state.  I know some Israelis get offended when Israel is referred to as a military state, it sounds undemocratic, but when you can’t go anywhere without seeing military presence, not on trains, not to the beach, not hiking in the desert, not even to my own bedroom, that, to me, constitutes a military state.  The bombs being tested in the Negev that shake my window on a weekly basis, the apache helicopters and the fighter jets and the bombers flying overhead everyday: I will not miss that.  I also won’t miss the bag searches in all public places and the security guards with oozies.  I know these things make Israelis feel safe, but they have the exact opposite effect on me.

Which brings me to something I miss about Canada.  I miss being in a country where we are so privileged  that our greatest concerns are taxes, the rights of cyclists versus cars, the exchange rate of the dollar…  I miss the simplicity of a safe country.  I will not miss the fear here, and what fear does to people.  I am glad I have had a chance to experience that, so that I can now appreciate how lucky I am to have been born in Canada.

Sofy

Sakhnin

Sakhnin

My roommate Sofy took me home with her twice over the past month.  Sofy lives in Sakhnin, an Arab town in the Galilee, about a 3 hour train ride north, near Akko.

It is a really sweet little town, in the hills (as most Arab towns are in the hills) with about 20,000 people, many of whom Sofy is related to (we couldn’t walk 10 feet without meeting a cousin or uncle).

Sofy’s family is a really interesting study in Palestinian familial structures.  Sofy’s mother was from Deir Hanna, two towns away (maybe 20 km) and Sofy’s father was from Sakhnin, and, according to tradition, they settled in Sakhnin when they were married.  They had four children, Sofy was the last, and when she was four, her father died of cancer.

Sofy's Mom

This left Sofy’s mother in a bad position: she was away from her family, and she was not embraced by her husbands family, they did not make an effort to take care of her.  But they would not allow her to move back to Deir Hanna with the children: in a paternal society the children are considered part of the father’s family, so if she wanted to leave, she would leave without the kids.

Of course she couldn’t do that, so she struggled to make ends meet for five years and then she remarried.  The remarriage was also problematic.  Her new husband had been married before (I’m not clear on whether his wife died or if they divorced) and his family had really loved the first wife, even though he had been miserable with her.  He is very much in love with Sofy’s mother but his family does not like her, and blame her for the rash of divorces and remarriages that occurred in the family after their marriage (he seems to have opened pandora’s box).  So still Sofy’s mom is not included in the clan structure of Sakhnin because neither of her husbands’ families have welcomed her in.  But Sofy loves her step dad and the two children he had with her mother are the center of Sofy’s world.

Limor and her husband (we went to the zoo!)

Sofy’s oldest sister Limor has been married for a year, and her other sister, Hannan, is engaged.  The problem is, Hannan’s fiancé is not from Sakhnin and their mother will not allow her to marry him.  If Hannan marries him she will be banished from the family and Sofy will not be allowed to speak to her again.  At first I was horrified by this, but now I see that this is her attempt to protect Hannan: if Hannan moves away in order to be with this man, she will be left without anyone to protect her, without her family to take care of her, because there is no guarantee that his family will.  Their mother does not want Hannan to be on her own like she was, to be trapped like she was.  And threatening to disown her is the only power that she has over Hannan.

Hannan’s (deceased) father’s family, however, approve of the marriage, and so Hannan has moved in with her paternal grandmother.  Sofy’s mother has banned her children from visiting Hannan, but of course Sofy and I did, and the entire time her grandmother lectured Sofy that she needed to talk some sense into her mother.

Sofy being lectured by an Aunt about what to do about Hannan

This conflict is central to the family right now, there were dozens of fights about it, and everyone in the extended family has their opinion, and it also is central in Sofy’s mind, because what happens here could determine her future.  If Sofy falls in love with someone that she meets here at University, her mother can never know (which means that nobody at the university can know, because word travels fast in the Arab community I have learned), and ultimately Sofy will have to chose between the man she loves and her family.

Deir Hanna: the old mosque

Sofy’s mother’s family lives in Deir Hanna, nearby.  This is not their village, the way that Sakhnin is Sofy’s father’s village: the home of the entire family longer than anyone can remember.  Her mother’s family came to Deir Hanna in 1948: they are among the hundreds of thousands of internal refugees from the creation of the State of Israel. When Sofy’s maternal Grandmother, Fatima, was 6 years old her family lived in Hittin, a village of about 1200 near the Sea of Galilee (in Arabic: Tiberias, in Hebrew: Kinneret).  Situated in a valley between two huge hills on the road from Akko to the Galilee this area was considered to be “strategic” by the IDF in 1948 (not surprising: there has been a town here for 5000 years, and this has been the location of important battles, most significantly the Battle of Hittin between the Christians and Muslims in 1187).  The villagers of Hittin, in 1948, had a peace agreement with the nearby kibbutz of Jewish settlers, so when the war broke out the people of Hittin were not armed and had not made their town defensible the way some other Arab towns had.  When the Jewish army marched towards Hittin, and when they heard stories of the massacre of Arabs in Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, the people in Hittin fled.  50 men stayed behind to try to protect the houses, and Fatima and her family walked to Tiberias, and when the IDF again drew near, they fled to the mountains between Tiberias and Maghar. Eventually they made their way to Deir Hanna.  The villagers who had stayed in Hittin fought the Israeli forces and lost, decisively, and were expelled. The town was leveled, and all attempts by the villagers to return were stopped.

Hittin, 1934

Now, when I heard that Sofy’s family was from Hittin I was thrilled.  Maybe you have noticed I have a bit of affection for Crusader history and one of the biggest events in Crusader history, the battle when Salah al-Din destroyed the Christian army and drove them from the Holy Land, happened here, below the Horns of Hittin.  So on Israeli Independence day (of all days) Sofy, her little brother and sister and I picked up their grandmother and went to Hittin for a picnic.

The Horns of Hittin!! (you can see the Sea beyond)

You wouldn’t even know that there had been a town at Hittin if someone hadn’t told me.  It is just a hill, a meadow, a pile of rocks, and an old, crumbling mosque with its minaret poking out from among the trees.  How much of the town was destroyed by the IDF, how much by locals taking the stones to build their homes, barns and fences, and how much of the town was merely reclaimed by nature, I don’t know, but it was really remarkable to see, and all the while Sofy’s mother was lamenting the loss of her “homeland.”

Fatima, inside the crumbling mosque of Hittin

When arguing about the claims of the Palestinians to this land, many people discredit their claims by saying that there was no Palestinian nation, no Palestinian nationalism, until long after Israel was created.  What I noticed from Fatima was that Palestinian-ness did not even factor.  Hittin was her homeland, not Palestine.  And the fact that she lives a half hour drive away does not matter.  Hittin is her town, Deir Hanna is not, even 60 years later it still isn’t home.

What was problematic, though, and what was a continuation of the experiences that I had during the Holocaust Memorial day, was how memory came into the story.  How something may not be true, but that it is believed is so much more important.  Fatima, while mourning the loss of Hittin, spoke about how it was such a big town, as big as Sakhnin.  It wasn’t.  Not by a long shot: Sakhnin has 20,000 and Hittin, at its height, was never much larger than 1000 people.  But this is what she believes: that Israel was willing and able to evacuate and destroy a city of 20,000 people.  I’m sure Fatima is not lying intentionally, she was only six years old and Hittin was her whole world, so I’m sure it seemed huge.  Not only does she believe this, but so do her children and grandchildren.  It made me think about oral history: if I, as a Palestinian, have two sources of history: my grandmother and the textbooks issued by the State of Israel, who will I believe?  So I wonder how much the second and third generations are living with this impression of the crimes committed against their families that are not entirely true?  But, again, how do we decide which are true and which aren’t? or does it matter?  If people believe it, it will drive their actions no matter how much evidence you might provide that it is not true.

The mosque ruins had been fenced in, allegedly to block an attempted restoration, but it was nothing some wirecutters couldn't fix

Lots of descendents of Hittin residents came for a picnic on Independence Day

The family picnicing in the mosque ruins

The Bride and Groom to be

There were a lot of things about this day that left me thinking.  On my second visit to Sakhnin I attended a wedding dinner and an engagement party.  I took some videos: one of the groom’s female family members arriving at the engagement party, dancing and singing, and carrying a box full of the jewelry that they bought for the bride (here), and then you can see the men entering the women’s party, again singing and dancing (here).  The groom puts the jewelry on his fiancé and the friends and family pin money to his shirt, and then they take loads of pictures, eat baklava, and go home.  It was an interesting day, and I’ve loved my visits to Sakhnin and hope that I get to go again before I leave Israel.

Bride and Groom

The Bride to be (heavy makeup is a big thing in the Arab community)

Western girls put their hair up, she’s put her hijab up!!

They pin money on the groom (Doesn't this Arab guy look like Justin Timberlake?)

Even the little girls wear tons of makeup

Hebron

Tomb of the Patriarchs

Hebron is the second largest city in the West Bank, with 160,000 Arabs, and it is also one of the four holy cities of Judaism, because it is the home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where Abraham and his family are allegedly buried, built upon land that Abraham bought in the famous biblical story.  In 1929, in response to growing discontent with the growing Jewish immigration, there were violent riots across Palestine.  In Hebron this resulted in the massacre of 67 members of the Hebron Jewish community.  After this the Jewish community of Hebron fled, and Hebron was, for the first time, without a Jewish population.  In 1967 Israel conquered the West Bank, and one year later a group of Jews rented rooms in a down-town Hebron hotel and refused to check out.  Thus began the Jewish re-settlement of Hebron.  Today the Jewish community is 600 people plus 200 Yeshiva (religious schools) students.  The Israeli government puts a huge amount of effort into protecting this Jewish community.  The town has been partitioned into two sections: H1, home to 120,000 Arabs and administered by the Palestinian Authority, and H2, home to the Jewish community and 40,000 Arabs.  H2 consists of the downtown core, the main street of old Hebron, and the Tomb of the Patriarchs.  On the streets in H2 Arabs cannot drive cars, only walk.  There are 16 checkpoints in the town, and Arabs cannot walk on the main street, not even if their houses exit onto that street: they have had to create new exits, by knocking down walls or by using their roofs and ladders.

Muslim women, walking on the muslim side of the street (on the way to the Tomb of the Prophets, also holy in Islam), Jewish car on the Jewish side of the street

Partition of Hebron

There are two legal systems in H2 Hebron.  Settlers, as Israeli citizens, are subject to Israeli law and the law is enforced by Israeli police.  Arabs, as residents of an occupied territory, are under military law which is enforced by the Israeli military.  Soldiers have no authority over settlers, and police have no authority over Arabs.  This means that if a soldier sees a settler commit a crime against an Arab, the soldier can do nothing, he can only call the police.  However, there have been many, many cases of police in Hebron failing to enforce the laws.  While soldiers are conscripted and end up in Hebron completely by chance, to be a police officer is a chosen career, and they request to be placed here.  The result is that the police are usually very sympathetic and supportive of the settler movement in Hebron, and therefore not terribly eager to enforce the law (although some of the police just take the job because the money is good).  When they do attempt to enforce the law, often the settlers will attack them, spit on them, throw things at them (like dirty diapers) and take them to court.  The result is that settlers often get away with breaking the law, which explains the videos you see on youtube or on the news of settlers beating Arabs while the authorities stand by and watch: the soldiers can’t intervene and the police often don’t want to.

Ilan, Breaking the Silence founder

Our trip was in two parts.  The first thing we did was take a tour with an organisation called Breaking the Silence.  Our tour guide was one of the founders of this group.  Ilan was a soldier in the Israeli Defence Force from 2001-2004.  He served for 9 months in Hebron during the Intifada.  The things that he did and the things that he saw did not sit well with him, and while most people told him “just do your service and then forget about it,” he and the other soldiers in his unit made a promise that they would not just forget about what they did.  During their service they began taking pictures of Hebron, and when they were released from the IDF they got an art gallery in Tel Aviv and posted all the pictures on the walls and invited people to come see the real Hebron.  On day 3 they had 2000 people lined up to see.  On day 4 they were arrested.  Thus began their battle against the state in the name of full disclosure.

Confrontation between Breaking the Silence guide and police, both sides videotape the whole thing

Settler giving us dirty looks, police escort

Settler shouting at us, police escort

Ilan and his colleagues have been leading tours to Hebron for a couple of years now.  The settlers and police still try to stop them, but the supreme court keeps finding in their favour: freedom of speech and all that.  Breaking the Silence has documentation to prove every assertion that they make and are very aware of their legal rights and, therefore, are very hard to shut down.  As we took our tour they had a camera man accompanying us in order to document any confrontation that we may have with the police or the settlers.  Although we did get a lot of angry glares and some verbal harassment from the settlers (we were called anti-semites – 75% of our group are pretty devout Jews), most of our confrontations were with the police.  The entire day we were surrounded by officers who prevented our tour from progressing, at every step there was an argument between the tour guide and the police, the entire time the Breaking the Silence cameraman filming away and a police officer filming reciprocating: although he was more interested in filming us, the tour participants.  The Israeli police keep track of who attends leftist events throughout the country and, thanks to a recently passed law, they can deport you without cause if you are in the West Bank with a foreign passport, a law designed specifically to remove activists.

Shuada Street, downtown Hebron. Ghost town

Arab houses which Ilan says the army destroyed to create clearer sightlines

Hebron, in short, is a ghost town.  The main street used to be the bustling commercial center of a major city, but now over 1200 shops have been closed, the doors welded shut, and the market is defunct thanks to huge concrete barriers and miles of razor-wire.  Ilan remembers the closing of the meat market.  He says that as a soldier he had hated being posted to the checkpoint at the entrance of the meat market: it was loud, hot, and smelt of rotten meat and was buzzing with flies, shouting, and the cries of animals.  One day the lieutenant showed up with a bulldozer and blocked the entrance of the market with huge concrete barriers.  The soldiers celebrated: no more meat market, no more working that checkpoint.  That night, Ilan said, they ate chicken for dinner and it occurred to his unit that they were the only ones in town eating meat.  That was the moment, he says, that he began to question what they were doing there.  It was, by the way, 3 years before they were able to build another meat market – across town.

Entrance to the meat market

Entrance to the meat market

Entrance to the meat market

Of the most vivid stories that Ilan told us about his service in Hebron was his part in evicting the Arabs from their homes in the vicinity of the Jewish settlements.  Over 13,000 Arabs were forcibly expelled, some with two week’s notice, some with no notice at all.  Ilan says he would show up at the door, at any hour of the day or night, with an eviction notice, and they would verbally and physically harass the family until they were out.  The family could only take as much as they could carry, of course, because they could not drive their cars on the street to come and get their things.  As Ilan explained, the Arabs in this part of town could not even get an ambulance to their houses without placing a request with the central command three days in advance.  Ilan said that the purpose of these evacuations was to help create a bubble of safety around the settlers, to limit the effectiveness of the attacks by Arabs upon the Jews during the Intifada.  However, the expulsions continued after the violence ended, and today there are 50,000 less Arabs here than there were: only perhaps 1000 Arabs remain in the old city core.

If the Arabs failed to cover up their windows, this is what happened: flaming bottles thrown through the bars

... and broken windows

Not all of the Arabs were forced to leave.  Most left because they could no longer live an ordinary life there.  Markets closed, there were restrictive curfews, and they were harassed by the settlers.  The settlers don’t seem to have a wonderful existence either.  They live in heavily guarded compounds, and they are forbidden from entering the Arab sections of town.

Jewish compound: see the guard tower?

This compound is fully enclosed with an automatic gate

Our tour was supposed to end with a meeting with a Palestinian family whose lives have been affected by the events in Hebron, but the police, who had been threatening to end our tour from the moment it had begun, stopped our progression for good.  They called in our buses and were prepared to give us a police escort out of town, denying the requests of the religious members to visit the Tomb of the Prophets on the way out.

However, Noah, the girl who organised our trip, had arranged for us to meet a settler that afternoon as well, and when the police heard this settler’s name, suddenly we were no longer required to leave town, and we headed towards the Hebron Museum, this time without our police and military guard which had seemed so vital before.

Noam Arnon, leader and spokesperson of the Hebron settlers

Sign explaining the settler's justifications

The settler, Noam, spent much of the hour attempting to justify the presence of Jews in Hebron, which to me was problematic.  I don’t think any one of us questions the right of Jews to live in Hebron, but he was avoiding the main issues, and that is: at what cost is it justifiable for the Jews to live there.  Do 600 Jews have more of a right to live in Hebron than 50,000 Arabs?  Should 13,000 Arabs be forcibly removed from their homes and their livelihoods in order to accommodate them? Is that morally acceptable?

It is, clearly, legally acceptable as far as the state of Israel is concerned.  Not only does Israel provide the security for these settlers, but the state also subsidises settler housing and transportation, requires them to pay less taxes, and even gives them financial support.  The economic advantages of living in settlements throughout the West Bank are so overwhelming that today many settlers are not there for ideological reasons at all but for economic ones.  In the past, whenever I heard Israeli heads of state proclaim that they supported the two-state solution, I took that at face value.  Now, however, I find it hard to believe.  How can they speak of a two-state solution when there are now nearly 500,000 Israelis living in the territory that is destined to be the Palestinian state, not because they are religious radicals who view the true Jewish state as stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, but because their government has encouraged them to live there?  When Israel pulled the settlers out of Gaza in 2005 it took 30,000 soldiers to remove 7,000 settlers!  That makes a pullout from the West Bank seem to be an impossible task.

The trip to Hebron was, to myself and to many of my classmates who want to see Israel as the benevolent Jewish motherland, a real eye-opening experience.

The international press showed up to cover the confrontations

International press hired a local!

Inside the settler compound

Playground inside the settlers' compound

Back in October I visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.  I spent 7 hours there: it was one of the most interesting museums I’ve ever visited, full of personal stories and artefacts.  They had diaries, prison uniforms, the bunk beds from Auschwitz, the tram tracks from the Warsaw Ghetto: it was a social historians dream.  And it was heartbreaking.  More than once I choked back tears.  As you follow the route through the museum the entire history plays out before you, full of faces and real people: it becomes a very personal experience.  The final room of the museum is about the creation of the state of Israel, and the arrival of the refugees from Europe and their effort to create a life for themselves in this new Jewish homeland.  As you leave this room you step out on to a huge balcony with panoramic views of the green, rolling hills outside Jerusalem with this sense that Israel is the happy ending of the greatest horror story ever told.

The way in which Holocaust Memorial day is commemorated is very much along the same narrative.  It is very much a national narrative, and it is not seen a something separate from current political realities.

Crowd of Students at BGU Holocaust Memorial Ceremony

I went to the memorial ceremony on campus on Monday morning.  At 10am, everywhere in the entire country (except in Arab towns) the air-raid sirens sound for two minutes in commemoration (listen HERE).  Everyone stops.  They stop their cars and open their doors to listen, or they stop walking and contemplate (although, not everyone stops.  Some cars drive on, a friend says the coffee shop was bustling, and I saw some Arab girls on campus walking by the ceremony).  I was so impressed by how many students came to the ceremony that the university held.  They didn’t have to: classes were delayed so that they could; back home that would have meant time to sleep in, but there was a massive crowd, all young people, and all appreciating the solemnity of the occasion.  No cell phones rang, no whispering or chatting, just total respect for a full hour.  There were speeches, singing and dancing (I really think that certain things should not be subject to interpretive dance, and I think the Holocaust is one of them, but I guess everyone has their own way of remembering).  Particularly touching was when several students came up and told the story of their own family, listing those who died and those who survived, and then light a candle in their honour, with more than a few tears.  And finally a survivor himself came up to speak.  It was all in Hebrew, but I picked up enough to appreciate the drama of the tale.  The ceremony finished with a prayer and the singing of the Israeli National Anthem (strangely this is the first time I’ve heard it.  How did I go 6 months without hearing the anthem?).

The Holocaust survivor who spoke to us

I could not understand the speeches myself, but I was told later that it was very much about the State of Israel, and they even spoke about Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.

The following evening it was arranged for us to meet with a Holocaust survivor who spoke English.  I couldn’t make the meeting myself, but one classmate who did came to me with her thoughts about the experience. She said that while telling his story he got off track a bit and spoke of his own brother, also a survivor, and his experience in the Israeli army in the 1948 war.  At one point, in order to prevent a group of Arab women from escaping they stole the women’s clothing: stripped them naked, so that they would be too ashamed to run into town and warn the men that the Jewish soldiers were coming.  He laughed at this “anecdote” and did not find anything disturbing about the whole event.  Beeba was pretty disgusted by this story.  She said she always expects better of Jews: they have seen what horrible things humans can do to each other: how can someone who has witnessed such dehumanizing behaviour then turn around and perpetuate such behaviour?

This story brought be to a realization about Israel that I think really helps me understand their perspective in the conflict in a way that I’ve always sort of known, but never really understood.  The holocaust is not seen as a case of “us against the Nazis” but it is seen as “us against the world” and this is why it is so common for Israelis, when debating the conflict, to conflate Arabs with the Holocaust.  I’ve been told that Arabs were involved in the Holocaust and that they would like to implement a holocaust.  But not just the Arabs.  When Israelis travel abroad they are warned not to tell anyone where they are from, that they should be afraid, because people will try to kill them.  There is a real sense that another Holocaust could happen at any moment. And it is because there is a direct line drawn from the Holocaust to the State of Israel any criticism of Israel is considered to be almost a continuation of the Holocaust: the idea of “us against the world” is a dominant mode of thought.

One week after Holocaust Memorial Day Israel commemorates the Day of the Fallen Soldiers, where all Jews who have died here since 1860 (militia-men, soldiers, and victims of terrorism) are remembered.  It is apparently a very sombre occasion, since I doubt there is anyone in Israel who has not lost someone or is not close to someone who has.  The following day is Israeli Independence Day, a celebration of the creation of a Jewish homeland, complete with concerts, fireworks and BBQ’s in the park.  Just like the Holocaust Museum you can feel a story being told where horrible things have happened to the Jews but the way forward, the way to protect the Jews, is only through the State of Israel.

Jerusalem was very, very crowded.  There were the Muslims in town for Friday Mosque, which happens at the Haram al-Sharif on the South-East corner of the old city every Friday at noon. Every week Muslims get bussed in from the surrounding towns to attend Friday prayer.  There were Jews in town for Pesach, more than usual had come to pray at the Kotel (the Western Wall) before the beginning of Shabbat on Friday.  There were thousands of Christian pilgrims from all around the world, of every race imaginable, speaking dozens of different languages in town to trace the footsteps of Jesus on his last day.  Then, of course, there were riot police everywhere, because there is opportunity for conflict around every corner with this many people in town at once.

Crowded Via Dolorosa near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Church of the Holy Sepulcher

We were an eclectic group who traveled together to Jerusalem: A Jew, a Catholic, an atheist and a Muslim (sounds like the run up to a joke).  We entered the city through the Jaffa gate, which sits closest to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is built on the spot where Jesus is alleged to have been crucified and buried, and we followed the Via Dolorosa in reverse.  All along the route pilgrims stood along the walls with their crosses, or walked with their prayer books open before them, or sang quietly their hymns, or followed a priest who led them in prayer at each of the stations of the cross.  We saw a few people weeping, most people just looked tired and hot as the bright sun bounced off the pale Jerusalem stone.  I was disappointed not to see anyone flagellating themselves, nor did I see anyone dressed like Jesus, complete with crown of thorns and fake blood. I guess the real crazies stayed home this year    Anwar did overhear an Arab shopkeeper saying that there were not nearly as many pilgrims this year as there usually are, and I was surprised at how quiet some of the streets were.

there were Christians from all over the world

Coptic Christians

and South Asian Christians

In front of the Greek Orthodox church, where the first station of the cross is and where the Via Dolorosa begins with the sentencing of Jesus by Pontius Pilate was, on the other hand, so crowded we could hardly breath, and we became trapped in the crowd.  We couldn’t go forward or backward and had to wait as patiently as we could until the procession began and the people moved onward.  When the procession tried to squeeze its way into the street I was certain someone was going to be hurt (watch my video HERE).  We were swept away by the crowd as it moved down the street, like cattle in a corral with high walls on either side, with singing and praying and a little bit of pushing.

Crowd control

My companions were not comfortable in the crowd so we headed off, away from the Via Dolorosa, in the Muslim quarter.  We soon came across a barrier in the street, manned by IDF soldiers and riot police, holding the Arab citizens from entering the crowded part of town.  Anwar stood by to watch for a while (she was looking for something to be angry about, admittedly) and was horrified to see the guards letting tourists through but not the Muslims, who were on their way to Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.  Only those Arabs who could prove that their homes were on the other side of the barrier were allowed through.  I swear, one day that girl’s temper is going to get her arrested, we practically had to drag her away.

The settlers are really subtle

The guys wanted to go to Sheikh Jarrah, a controversial neighbourhood in East Jerusalem, because every Friday Arabs and Left wing Israeli and foreign activists come there to protest the appropriation of Arab houses in an Arab neighbourhood by religious Jews.  So far three families have lost their homes based upon the legal argument that this land had been Jewish land prior to 1948.  The Jews who are moving here (who, by the way, are not the descendents of the Jews who lived here prior to the war) do not recognise that Jordan had a right to give this land to Arab refugees in 1949, and in some cases have marched right into the Arab homes, moved their furniture onto the streets, and locked the Arabs out (watch a video taken of this HERE).  From what I understand the Israeli supreme court found that the land was rightfully Jewish but that as long as the Arabs paid rent they could remain.  The Arab families are challenging this ruling in court with over a dozen documents from the Ottoman administration prior to 1918 and the British period prior to 1948 which says that the land was always either Arab owned or state owned and the Jews who were there only ever rented the land.

So, why is it so important to the Jews to have these homes?  One explanation is that there is a tomb of a Jewish patriarch in the neighbourhood.  There are two other tombs of this same patriarch in two other places in Israel.  The other explanation is that strategically this neighbourhood is important to those who feel that a united Jerusalem is a non-negotiable part of the Jewish state in the event of a two-state solution.  These Jews are strategically buying up land in Arab areas which surround the old city so that, if and when the negotiations on the borders begin there are too many Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem to justify the division of the city between the Jewish state and the Arab state.

The Al-Kurd family's old house and their new accomodation

Offensive grafitti on the appropriated house

When we arrived in Sheikh Jarrah it seemed like any nice, quiet, upper-middle class Arab neighbourhood.  People were washing their cars, kids were playing in the streets.  Immediately what stood out was the house covered in Israeli flags with a giant menorah: this is the first house that was appropriated by Jews.  Across the street there is a small tent with a bed, table and some chairs in it: this is where the dislocated family has been living.  I don’t think they live there out of necessity: it seems they have another house somewhere, but the members take shifts staying here, 24 hours a day, in order to make sure that nobody forgets what has been done to them.

Mohammad and two of my classmates

When we were looking at this tent and the padlocked house beside it a man came up to speak with us.  His name was Mohammad and he is currently battling the impending appropriation of his own house in the courts.  He spoke with us (and a couple of Basque girls, who, I imagine, were there in solidarity, as activists in their own political struggle), answered our questions, and explained the current state of his political battle.

We did see some Orthodox Jews in the neighbourhood.  Some were carrying guns: security guards, and the others just walked quickly past, without acknowledging our presence.

On the way back to Jerusalem we walked past some Arab children playing.  They surrounded my classmate, and one of the boys started kicking him!  So Dan, putting his Arabic classes to use, said to him “La Yehud”: Not a Jew.  The boy stopped kicking, looked at him sideways and said “Araby?”  Dan told the boy that he was American, and the boy gave him the thumbs up and posed for a picture.

Orit herself is very passionate, and the next day she took her guests on a march in the West Bank for Land Day.  They met lots of activists, one who apparently used to be in Hamas until he became disenchanted with their methods.  The discussed the conflict, marched to the security fence, and planted some olive trees under the watchful eyes of the IDF.  Anwar argued with these men, too.  They claimed that they were advocates for women’s rights, and Anwar asked if that was true, why were there no women at this protest?

Then the organizers warned my friends that they were going to start throwing stones, so maybe they should move away.  Anwar and Orit did, because if they were arrested in the West Bank as Israeli passport holders they would be in a lot of trouble, but two of my classmates stayed to watch.  When the Palestinians began to throw stones the IDF didn’t react.  Eventually they sent some soldiers in to try and move them along, and when the Palestinians did not, the IDF sent a jeep through the gate and threw tear gas canisters.  To stop the jeep from following the fleeing Palestinians (at this point it was mostly boys, all the older protesters had left before the stone throwing) several of the boys moved large rocks into the jeeps’ path and encouraged my classmates to help them!  I have a fantastic image of these two white guys helping them move these stones around, but as they were doing this the tear gas snuck up on my two classmates, and before they knew what it was their faces were stinging and they were crying so hard they couldn’t see.

They were not arrested, the story ended there.  I guess the jeep stopped and the Palestinians went home.  My friends said that as much as it gave them a fright the whole thing seemed very routine, and they never felt like anyone’s lives were in danger, which I suppose isn’t surprising since pretty much every week there are more stories of kids throwing stones and Israel using tear gas.  It just seems like such a futile exercise.

I’m sure you all know the story behind Pesach: think Charlton Heston and the Ten Commandments.  When the Jews were slaves in Egypt, Moses came along and demanded the Pharaoh set them free.  When the Pharaoh refused God brought ten plagues down upon Egypt: blood, frogs, boils etc.  The final plague was the death of the first-born son of every family in Egypt.  The Jews, however, were instructed to sacrifice a lamb and smear the blood on their doorway so that when God came for the first born he would ‘pass over’ their houses. After this tenth plague the Pharaoh set them free, and the Jews ran from Egypt so quickly that the bread they baked for the journey did not have time to rise.  So Pesach is a part of the promise of the Jews never to forget what God did for them in Egypt. They remember by telling the story of the Jews’ escape from Egypt and by eating only unleavened bread (bread that hasn’t risen) for one week

The bread thing turns out to be a bit more complicated than that.  There is a long list of bread-related ingredients that are not allowed, and these rules are pretty strictly enforced throughout the country, enough that for goyim like me it is a pain in the butt.  The grocery stores have taped off the bread section, and carry only kosher-for-passover chips, cookies and cakes (which really don’t taste that good, I don’t care what they say).  Candy machines are practically empty and gumball dispensers have been covered in plastic bags to help you resist temptation.  A lot of restaurants, ie. pizza places, are closed because, without bread, they have not product to sell.  And there is no beer!!

All of our Israeli friends made a real effort to make sure that all of us foreign students had an invitation to spend the big meal on the first night of Pesach, the Seder, with a Jewish family.  I had three invitations, and since Shoonit, my roommate, asked first, I went home with her.  Her family hosted me for a Shabbat dinner a few months ago, so I already knew them, and her sister was a little less frightened of using her English with me.

Before I arrived Shoonit helped her Mom to clean the entire house from top to bottom to remove all traces of bread, called chametz, and they burn any chametz in the house.  They tape up the cupboards with their normal dishes and they get out two new sets of dishes, the kosher-for-Passover meat dishes and the kosher-for-Passover dairy dishes (because besides no bread they need to keep to the usual rules of keeping meat and dairy separate).  Like Shabbat, the Seder diner begins at sundown with the lighting of the candles by the women while the men are at synagogue.  When the men come home, we sit around the table and they begin to read the Haggadah, which is a book, in Hebrew, filled with the story of the exodus from Egypt and directions about how to prepare for Pesach and what to do during Pesach.  There are lots of prayers too.  When Shoonit’s father prays (actually, all the Jewish men whom I’ve seen praying do this) he reads the words so fast that I have no idea how anyone can understand him.  Actually, it is kind of like when I was a kid and used to go to Christian friends’ houses and nobody paid attention while their dad prayed, instead they were whispering compliments about each others shoes, or picking fights.

For me the most interesting part of Pesach dining is the skill with which Shoonit’s mom turns the Matzot into edible food.  Matzo is the unleavened bread which Jews all over the world eat to remember the bread that the Jews took with them from Egypt in such a hurry that it hadn’t had time to rise.  I would describe Matzot as giant, unsalted Saltine crackers.  Not very good at all.  But with the right sauces, spices, and vegetables they can actually turn out pretty tasty.

After the Seder we played games late into the night, and the next day Shoonit’s aunts, uncles and cousins came over and they smoked nargileh, chewed gat (a tradition in Yemen, where her family is from, gat is leaves that look kind of like rose leaves that are chewed and get you a bit high, I think) and discussed politics and religion.  One of her aunts spoke English very well, so I had someone to talk to and she asked me what I thought about Israel and why I was here.  One of the very first questions she asked me was what side I was on on the conflict.  She wasn’t particularly satisfied with my answer of ‘both sides.’  I have come to learn that ‘both sides’ is interpreted as saying ‘their side’ and is a completely unacceptable answer.  But we left it at that, which was a shame, because I would have liked her to have shared with me her perspective on things.  Although I know Shoonit was glad that the conversation ended there.

So now I am on my way back to Be’er Sheva to my non-kosher-for-Passover kitchen and my freezer filled with bread.  Shoonit is not coming with me because she needs to keep kosher until Sunday and she can’t do that around Sofy and I.  I’m hoping to head to Jerusalem for Good Friday to experience a completely different religious rite.  I’ll keep you posted if I do.

(I’m sorry I didn’t take any pictures.  My camera isn’t working!!  Hope to have it up and running by Good Friday)

Matzo

Moses

Accompanying us on this trip was one of my classmates, Laszlo, and American soldier.  Laszlo has been telling Anwar that he’s wanted to go home with her ever since I went and so Anwar, curious as to what her family would think of him, asked her father and, surprisingly, he said it was ok for her to invite an American man home to spend the night (I think my Dad would have been more strongly opposed had I made a similar request when I was young).

For Anwar this was all a bit of an experiment.  Her father is a pretty open-minded guy, but he still holds tight to certain elements of tradition, and her mom is more religious.  Anwar see’s it as her job, as the oldest of six kids, to push her parents to their limits as much as she can.  She is the one that refused to wear the hijab, she is the one that went to the furthest-possible university, and now she is challenging their world-view by bringing home people like me (a married woman with no kids who travels without her husband for a year) and Laszlo (a soldier who fights Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan) home to meet her family.  Mind you, they didn’t know that Laszlo was a soldier when they said it was ok for him to come, and Anwar said she wasn’t going to tell them, but it was almost the first thing she said about him.  Even when they knew that he had served in Iraq and Afghanistan they still insisted he spend the night, to the point of practically kidnapping him (he wanted to catch the last train out, but they didn’t tell him how far away the station was until it was too late to catch it).

Once they found out he was a soldier they did ask him some interesting questions.  Like, did he know who is to blame for 9/11: the correct answer here is the Jews, of course.  No, not that the Jews were behind it, but that the terrorists of the Muslim world only hate America because of the support that it gives Israel, and if America was more critical then 9/11 never would have happened.  This led to a conversation about the recent uproar over a comment made in a report by the US army that said that Israeli actions lead to the endangerment of US soldiers’ lives.  Both Anwar’s dad and Laszlo agreed, not that the Jews are to blame, but that Muslim interpretation of the Jewish-American relationship is to blame.  Partially to blame.  We also talked about Obama: here in the Israeli media and among some of my classmates it has become common to accuse Obama of hating Jews, hating Israel and the old accusation that he is a Muslim has been resurrected.  One friend-of-a-friend even had the gall to compare Obama to Hitler.  So I asked Anwar’s dad if he thought that Obama was anti-Israel too, or if it is a common view among Muslims.  He said no.  He says people are glad to see an American president finally holding Israel to it’s end of the bargain (ie. regarding settlements in East Jerusalem) but they are still sceptical that he will really improve things for the Arabs.

Anwar’s dad is also doubtful that there will be another Intifada anytime soon.  There has been some talk in the Israeli media and among my classmates that there is trouble brewing.  And you can feel that people are worried: security has been tightened on campus and in the malls, and they are building a guard post and installing a security gate at the dorms.  But Anwar’s dad thinks it is just the Jews being “overdramatic.”

Where Anwar’s dad seems to be somewhat moderate in his political views, her 17 year old brother does not leave me with such an impression.  He has a swastika on his wall.  He hates living here and wants to get out.  He wants to move to America.  Anwar has been pushing her parents to allow her to go abroad for her MA degree, and I’ve always thought about how she was paving the way for her sisters to follow in her footsteps, it never occurred to me that she might be paving the way for her brothers too, that they might feel just as trapped as she does.  Laszlo had a better chance to speak to her brother, they went out to smoke Nargileh and met up with some of his friends.  They told him that they know that they have a better life because Umm al-Fahm is on the Israeli side of the Green Line instead of the West Bank side, and they wouldn’t trade sides if the offer was made to them, they are just angry at the way that Israel treats Arabs.

I can see this on Anwar’s face when she hangs out with us and the guys start to talk about killing terrorists or bombing Gaza.  The soldiers (Laszlo and the Jewish guys who’ve served in the IDF) always get so excited when they talk about warfare, and Anwar is the only Arab that hangs out with us (because she is the only one willing to risk the condemnation of her peers: seriously, one guy called her parents and told them that she was having sex with Americans just to get her into trouble because he didn’t like that she was spending time with Jews rather than Arabs) and she is usually quite alone in defending Arab rights.  Well, she wouldn’t be if the conversation didn’t keep shifting into Hebrew so that only the Israelis can follow it: there is a wide political gulf among my classmates, we have some on the far left and some on the far right and a few people dotting the spectrum in between.  But Anwar holds her own in an argument.  She is a strong-willed and stubborn girl, and I have no doubt that if she wants to get out of Israel, she will, and if she wants to become an activist for Arab rights, the Arabs will be all the better for it.

We spent only one night in Umm al-Fahm, but that was enough for her mother to feed me so much food that I put on a good five pounds.  I went to her grandmother’s again, where all the kids swarmed me again.  My Arabic is better this time around so I actually managed to communicate with them a little bit.  And as we were on our way to catch the bus home her mom handed me a bag filled with enough food to last a week: homemade turkish salad, rice, and a lifetime-supply of pita bread.  It was a good visit, and hopefully not the last, to Umm al-Fahm.

I hope to write in more detail about those trips, but I kinda doubt that will happen.  In the meantime…

I’m on a bus right now.  On my way to Umm al-Fahm with Anwar.  And another one of my classmates, Laszlo.  Yeah, she is bringing an American soldier home to meet the Muslim family, although his job is a secret because they would not be happy to know that they are hosting a man who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.  If they like him, she might later tell them that he is in the army.  I think she is trying to expose them to our world a little bit, to show them that their pre-conceptions about the West are wrong and then maybe they will feel a little more comfortable with her leaving Umm al-Fahm.  She really wants to go to North America to do her Masters, and she has no desire at all to get married, have children, and move back to Umm al-Fahm to be a housewife like her mom.  Her family is, of course, under the impression that the West is full of sinful and immoral people and that if she were to venture out into that world she would lose herself.  So when I go home with her I feel a lot of pressure to prove to them that you can live the life you want, be free and independent, and not be a horrible, sinful.. whore, really, is what they suspect all Western women are.  It kind of puts the pressure on, and it will be even more difficult this time with Laszlo there.  They already assume I must be cheating on Craig (they aren’t worried about him cheating on me), and Laszlo and I are good friends, so if we appear to be too friendly, they might think the worst, which will just confirm their beliefs that all Western women are sluts.  Ah, well.  We’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime I’m really looking forward to Anwar’s Mom’s cooking.  Oh, its the best.

Laszlo, the soldier

Classmate Laszlo at the Damascus Gate, Jerusalem

Our super-cozy hotel room

I’m not a religious person, but being in the Holy Land on Christmas it seemed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go to Bethlehem for Jesus’ ‘Birthday.’  I invited some classmates to come along and in the end our numbers swelled to 12 (now that I think of it, that is a bit biblical…).  I booked us a cheap hotel at the Damascus Gate, on the northern side of the Old City, just inside Arab East Jerusalem.  They crammed 8 of us into one tiny room and the remaining 4 into a room that was really designed for two adults and a kid…  pity those who go head-to-head with an Arab man in negotiations (this was the theme of the weekend in many ways).

Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem, from an angle I hadn't seen it from before

On Christmas Eve we spent the afternoon touring the city: went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, wandered through the Armenian Quarter, did a bit of shopping in the Muslim Quarter, and then gathered the troops up (there were so many of us I felt like I was a grade-school teacher on a field trip) to catch the bus to Bethlehem.

Security Barrier between Jerusalem and Bethlehem

Separation Barrier graffiti

Separation Barrier graffiti

Separation Barrier graffiti

Bethlehem is in the West Bank and is governed by the Palestinian National Authority.  To get there we took a bus to the border and then had to get out, cross the border, and catch taxis into town.  Crossing the border mean crossing the controversial Separation Barrier.  This 8 metre high cement wall was the subject of an argument with an Israeli recently: and as you can see from the graffiti painted on it, it is objected to by many.  Even just the different names for the wall – the anti-terrorism wall and the Apartheid wall – demonstrate the controversy.  Israel felt it necessary to construct the barrier after the Second Intifada which saw over 700 Israeli civilians killed over an 8 year period mostly as a result of Palestinian suicide attacks.  Since the building of the barrier attacks have decreased dramatically.  The objections to the wall are that they do not follow the internationally accepted green line, the border between the West Bank and Israel that was drawn by the 1949 peace agreement between Israel and Jordan.  It is very definitely encroaching on the West Bank side, anywhere from 200 metres inside it to 20 kilometres.  This is seen as a land-grab by Israel.  There are far more complexities to it than I am able to explain here, but finally seeing it was a really interesting experience.

I also had to pass through my first checkpoint.  Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank are another point of controversy.  They are to be found all over the West Bank, not just on the border, and are criticised for preventing Palestinians from living their lives: people are sometimes held up at checkpoints all day, and there have been accusations of assault and harassment of Palestinians by IDF forces.  The checkpoint I was at was a nice one: in an air-conditioned facility, there were toilets and a water fountain.  And their security was… a bit disappointing, really.  They hardly even looked at our passports and didn’t say anything when we set off the detectors.  It was probably because were are clearly foreigners crossing for Christmas that they were so relaxed because the next day while going through the checkpoint to Ramallah one of our group was stopped by the border guard because of her Muslim name and held up because she didn’t have the correct paperwork.

Once in the West Bank we caught taxis to the town square.  Luckily my Arabic roommate Sofy came with us, and she talked the drivers down from 50 shekels/taxi to 20 shekels.  She is a superhero.

Ho Ho Ho

Manger Square, Bethlehem: a circus-like atmosphere, here Sofy makes friends with a snake

Sofy befriends some friars.

Manger Square in Bethlehem was packed!!  There was a rock concert going on (I read online that this was a first: usually they had Christmas carols and this was an attempt to appeal to the younger generation… can’t say I was too impressed) and the square was full of Arab teenage boys and a few foreigners, mostly teenagers as well.  It was not at all what I expected.  I expected pilgrims, piousness, solemnity, religion.  I got your typical town party, where everyone comes out to see what is going on because it is the only thing that happens in town all year, and then they all stand around waiting to see what will happen.  It was still fun, just not what I was expecting.  There was only a brief procession shortly before midnight of men carrying torches and crosses which filed into the church, and then they locked the doors.

The biggest excitement in town seemed to be the presence of Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, the Palestinian President.  He came in the footsteps of a tradition begun by his predecessor Yassir Arafat who came to midnight mass every year with his Christian wife.  There was a huge crowd waiting to catch a glimpse of him, including my roommate Sofy who was very eager to see him, but when his motorcade sped by without so much as an open window, she cursed him: Arafat was a good man and Abbas is an asshole.

After a long night of shopping, dancing, exploring and eating our group made our way back through the wall and to Jerusalem.

The next day I decided to return to Bethlehem by myself while the rest of my friends went on their own adventures.  On the bus I met a Polish guy named Damian who lives in Birmingham and we quickly hit it off.  Instead of taking a taxi from the wall into town we ignored the drivers insisting that it was 6 kilometres to town (it is 2) we decided to walk.  Again the Palestinian elite security forces were all over town and when we got to Manger Square we found out why: it seems Abbas had stayed the night in Bethlehem and was currently inside the mosque for Friday prayer

Friday Mosque is a big deal in the Muslim world.  Men are to pray five times every day, and doing it collectively at the mosque is encouraged, but on Friday the prayer is preceded by a sermon.  Just like Sunday service in Christian churches the sermon is often political: a statement about how the devout should interpret current events and offering guidance on how to live.  A teacher of mine in Israel has said that if there are ever riots in a Muslim community (now and in the past) you will find that they often happen on a Friday after the sermon gets people riled up.  I’m keeping an eye out for this….  The sermon that I came across at the Mosque in Bethlehem was definitely political, the few words that I could understand were speaking about Iran, Egyptian President Mubarak, Jerusalem, Jews, and their own Mahmoud Abbas.  During the sermon the men stood and sat around the square, chatting quietly, fiddling with prayer beads, eating, smoking, and tourists walked by, taking quick pictures and moving on, and kids wandered thru, mimicking the Imam.  As the sermon wound up the men all stood, quickly formed perfect rows, placed their rugs on the ground and prayed.  It was so terrific to see: after years of studying the steps of Muslim prayer to see hundreds of men praying in unison to the words of the Imam.  I noticed that I was the only woman, so I zipped up my sweatshirt and hoped nobody would be offended, especially as I was filming.  But after the prayer was over one of the men came up to me and thanked me for having steered tourists around them (they kept trying to walk between the lines, right over the men’s rugs!), so that made me really feel like I wasn’t unwelcome.

After the prayer Damien and I moved closer to the Mosque door and we saw Mahmoud Abbas exiting.  My first encounter with a head of state… sort of.

Me inside the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem

Original mosaic floor in Church of the Nativity: I've read conflicting reports of whether 'original' means it is from the 4th Century church or the 6th Century one

Church of the Nativity

The crowds cleared after that and Damien and I went to check out the Church of the Nativity which we had been barred from entering the night before.  The church is one of the oldest continuously active Christian churches in the world, built by Constantine in 333.  That church was burnt and a new one was built by Justinian in 565, and was modified by the crusaders.  The major change that they made was to decrease the size of the door from a grand entrance to a tiny little hole that you have to duck to get through: this way the church would be harder to storm.  In 2002 during Operation Defensive Shield, part of Israel’s counter-terrorist offensive during the Second Intifada, 220 Palestinians took refuge in the church for 39 days.  They were mostly militants, some of them were armed, but there were also monks and civilians.  Shots were exchanged several times: at one point an Israeli smoke grenade set a fire in the church, but it was put out.  In the end the negotiations saw the some of the Palestinians freed, some exiled, and 8 had been killed.  I have been told that you can still see bullet-holes, but I can’t tell the difference between bullet-holes and simple age, so I don’t have any pictures.

Christmas dinner, with all the fixins (as long as you like lamb and cabbage salad)

Damien returned to Jerusalem with me and joined our group for Christmas dinner: we found an Armenian restaurant that was open and we had lamb and chicken with salads and Palestinian beer.  Then some of us went out to the bar where, once again, I was one of the only women in the whole place.  I can guess why Israeli women don’t go out: it is because Israeli men are very persistent with their come-ons and it really can ruin a girls night.  Luckily my guys are well versed in the drill and someone is always there to pretend he is my boyfriend and deter the pests.

And on Boxing Day I was up early to tour Jerusalem, buy souvenirs, eat some more of that fantastic Middle Eastern food and negotiate a ride back to Be’er Sheva. It was a long and eventful Christmas, one I will not soon forget!