Max's Croatian Travel Tips Part I

As you may or may not know, during Passover Break Allie and I took a 6-day vacation to the Eastern European country of Croatia. Now, you might be asking yourself… Why Croatia? Why not Greece? Or Italy? Or Paris? Well, I was asking myself those same questions while trying to choose a place to go as well. We ended up choosing Croatia due to a few different reasons – I wanted a beach vacation, Allie wanted somewhere she could see the historical sites, and we also decided we wanted to go somewhere unique, someplace that would be harder to travel to from America. So, we found ourselves spending a week in the town of Dubrovnik, Croatia, a southern town nicknamed “The Pearl of the Adriatic”.

Towards the end of our week, Allie turned to me and asked me what my five favorite and five least favorite moments of the trip were. I gave her my answer, and then being me… I realized that she had given me a great format to write my blog post about Croatia! (Sidebar: She then smacked me on the arm for being such a dork. This happens more often than you would think. Actually… probably about as much as you would think.) So, without further ado, the five best and worst moments of my Croatian vacation! (Sidebar: Hey, that rhymes! If Allie were here, she would have smacked me in the arm again right now.)


The Five Worst Things About Croatia:

Number Five: The Language Barrier

Now, you might be confused about this one, seeing as I am currently living in a foreign country where the language isn’t even read in the same direction as English, which Croatian certainly is. And truth be told, this wasn’t even that much of a problem, but I needed a fifth issue. However, in Israel, even when you encounter someone that doesn’t speak English, a real effort is made to understand each other until some form of communication is established. My Hebrew is still pretty weak, but I can get around pretty well here. However, when you encounter the rare Croatian that doesn’t speak any English, you’ll find you have a problem. I’ll focus on the time that Allie and I went to a café in the old city for lunch one day.

(Sidebar: Hold on. This is number six. FROMMER’S NEEDS TO FIRE WHOEVER WROTE THEIR SECTION ON DUBROVNIK AND CROATIA. They had no idea what they were talking about, from their restaurant selections to their assertion that Croatians all eat a huge lunch and barely eat dinner. Every store in town advertised a “light lunch” of a sandwich or some pizza. This was really frustrating throughout the trip. Not the lunch thing. The bad advice. Grr.)

So Allie and I were looking for a place for our “light lunch”, and we decided on a café overlooking the main street. We asked the waitress for a menu, and after she got excited about her English customers… she gave us a menu in Italian. OK, so that’s not such a big deal. Maybe a bit of a warning sign, but no big deal. We sat down, looked through the menu, and Allie chose two dishes she was deciding between. We called over the waitress – “Excuse me, which of these two do you like better?” “Yes!” Um… no? This went on for a while. “How big is the sandwich?” “Uh huh!” Oy vey. This went on for a while. “We’d also like two glasses of water. Not bottles. No, NOT bottles. From the sink.” At this point, I was even pantomiming turning on a faucet and filling a glass. Any guesses as to what we were given? In the end we had a very nice lunch… but at least some effort to communicate would have been nice.


Number Four: The Weather

Throughout the trip, the weather was pretty consistent. Not too cloudy and between 60-65°F the whole way. Pretty nice, right? OK, now look back on what I wanted from the vacation. Does this sound like beach weather to you? For all my talk about how I wanted to relax on the beach, and how Croatia has the some of the most beautiful beaches in the world… we got to spend a few hours at the beach on the last day. We wanted to go to some of the islands, but they were all closed due to the offseason. (We’ll pick up on this again later.) Even when we did go to the water, it was way too cold to get in. Even the hotel pool was closed! Very nice weather for sightseeing, but not so much for getting a tan.

Number Three: The Museums

Allie and I spent a few days exploring the old city, and we decided to spend some of that time exploring some of the various museums that were available. It was a pretty good deal: 40 kuna for 1 museum, 45 for 2, and 50 for all three. After dropping the 50 kuna (or 10 bucks) for all three… well, we didn’t even make it to the third one. Our first stop was to the agricultural museum, which was hidden in some corner of the city about 75 stairs up. Probably a bad sign. To our surprise, we were the only people there – there was one curator who went scurrying off the second we hit her floor. On top of that, the items were barely (if at all) labeled. For example, next to the rake was a card that read, “Rake”. No year that it was from. No special description of how it was used. Nothing. For all I know, this thing was used a month ago and then tossed into a tub of water to rust it. Despite that museum’s failure, we headed off to the cultural museum – had to be better, right? Well, it was certainly more crowded, and the items were labeled better, but I had a bit of an issue with the curators. And by “curators”, I actually mean “security guards”, since that was the role they played. We were followed into every single room, and rather than be asked if we would like any more information on what we were looking at, we were watched like hawks to make sure we didn’t touch anything. In fact, none of them said a single word to us at all, instead giving us accusatory looks the entire time. “How dare these visitors look at our museum exhibits!” After that frustrating experience, we decided to skip the maritime museum – I had better things to do with my time than be treated like a delinquent child.

Number Two: Everything in Dubrovnik Closes at 9PM

On one of the first nights of the trip, Allie and I went to one of Dubrovnik’s nicer restaurants to celebrate our 6-month anniversary. We decided to book the reservation for 9:30, figuring there was no reason to rush. To our surprise, pretty much the entire staff (including the manager) was waiting at the door for us when we arrived, ready to guide us to our table. We quickly realized why – there was only one other group at the restaurant! It ended up being a great meal, but we began to realize that this was a sort of trend. For some reason, everyone in Dubrovnik shuts down really early, leading to a total lack of tourists in the city at night. When we attempted to find something to do another night, we found that every single shop was shut down and there was nothing to do. This was really part of a greater trend, that being that we had inadvertently shown up at the offseason (despite Frommer’s assertion that April was the start of the tourism season – damn you Frommer’s!). We managed to work our way around it, but there were quite a few things we weren’t able to do because of this.

And that leads us directly into our number one issue with Croatia…

Number One: Korcula

We took a few day trips during our week in Croatia, one of which you’ll read about later, and one of which was to the island of Korcula. The day got off to a good start – we had a friendly and informative tour guide (who looked just like Jimmy Fallon), we stopped off in a cool and tiny little town called Ston for some Croatian coffee, and then we boarded a long and slow ferry for the island. And then we actually got to the island. To our surprise, practically the entire island was closed, making it a virtual ghost town. No shops open. No restaurants open. No one on the streets. Absolutely nothing. The island is supposedly the birthplace of Marco Polo, but even his house – what you would think to be the main attraction – was closed. (Sidebar: Remember when Egypt claimed to have the Burning Bush? I put this in the same category. For example, the house we didn’t get to go in was built in the 15th century, but Marco Polo was born in the 13th century. Seems like that would be a bit of an obstacle.) After a quick walk through the very small town, we were on our own for three hours. Three hours. IN A TOWN WITH NOTHING TO DO. We tried going to a restaurant that the tour guide recommended, an Italian place with homemade macaroni, but they ran out of food by the time we got there… at 12:30. We resigned ourselves to eating at a pizza place where the waiter rolled his eyes at me when I asked a third time for the water he had never given me. The rest of the time was spent hanging out on a little rocky area by the shore that we found for ourselves, where a stray cat found us and decided to keep us company. Really, just a disaster of a day trip, and the easy choice for the worst thing about Croatia.


I'm going to cut it here to prevent this from getting too long, but check back tomorrow for the 5 best things. We really did have a great trip, promise!

The Krembo Experience

Well, I’m all moved into my new apartment in Jerusalem! Feel free to check out my post at the St. Louis OTZMA blog for a recap of how incredible our new apartment is and what I’ll be doing for the remaining few months of the trip.

Before we moved in, all of OTZMA participated in a 5-day seminar called “Link to the Future”, where we discussed various issues surrounding the North American Jewish world. A lot of it was very interesting to me, but something one of the speakers said really stuck in my mind. Lee Perlman, who works in the Israel office of the Jewish Federations, spoke about what he referred to as “the Krembo experience”. For those of you who have never been lucky enough to enjoy some Kremboey goodness, a Krembo is a popular Israeli snack that consists of a graham cracker with a mound of basically whipped cream, covered in a chocolate shell. (Sidebar: Krembos have quickly become Allie’s favorite treat here – she even named her pet fish in Netivot Krembo, and when it died after 2 days, she named the new fish Kremlobo [without cream]. Luckily, Kremlobo remains with us today.) Krembos are amazing, but as Perlman said, how do you describe it to someone back home? How do you explain the best way to eat one, or how tasty the filling is, or how you savor those last few bites? In other words, how do you explain those everyday events that happen over here in Israel?

Kremboee goodness.

This has been one of my biggest challenges when it comes to writing this blog. There have been quirky little “only in Israel” moments just about every day, but how do I relate them all to my audience back in America? Well, I’m going to give it a shot. I’m going to start a new ongoing series of posts called “The Krembo Experiences”, which will be very short posts every few days relating one of those moments back to you all. In a way, this is also for myself – those Krembo experiences come and go very quickly, and I would hate to forget many of the moments that have made being in Israel so incredible. Obviously the bigger moments will still merit their own, longer posts, but hopefully this will give me an outlet to relay the little stuff, like shopping in a shuk, or dealing with an Israeli maintenance guy, or any of the other funny little moments in my life. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy them as well.

Quick Life Update

OK, we're going to take a brief pause in the ongoing "Searching for Middle (East) Ground" series to update everyone on where I am now. Part II of OTZMA has drawn to a close, meaning that my time in Yokne'am has come to an end. It's been a fun ride - the people I've met and worked with have been fantastic, and I truly did enjoy the work I was doing. Yokne'am is certainly a much smaller community than I've ever lived in, but it was a refreshing change of pace. Not sure I would want to build a life in this small of a town, but I certainly can see why someone would. (Keep in mind, by the way, that while Yokne'am is tiny by U.S. standards, it is considered a city here in Israel.) I especially enjoyed working in the school everyday - still not sure I want to make education my long-term career, but it certainly reinvigorated my passion for teaching.

Right now, I am staying in Yokne'am with my adoptive family for a few days for Passover, and we are heading up to Efi's parents' in Tzfat for the seder tomorrow night. Also, I've been joking about this, but seeing as at the end of every seder in America we say "Next year in Jerusalem"... well, I feel weird that I'm here in Israel but not in Jerusalem for Passover! So, I'm considering going for a day to have the experience. Maybe it's dumb and there's no point, but we'll see. Following that will be Shabbat back in good ole Ashkelon, and then Allie and I are jumping on a plane to Dubrovnik, Croatia for a 6-day vacation. I know Croatia probably sounds pretty random, but I'm excited - how many people do you know who can say they vacationed in Croatia? Besides, it's supposed to have some of the most amazing beaches in the world, so I'm looking forward to it.

After our trip, it's time for Part III! I'll be in Jerusalem with about half of OTZMA living at Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus and taking part in an internship for the remainder of the program. Our apartments should be interesting - by all accounts, they're some of the nicest accomodations that OTZMA has EVER provided for their participants, the only drawback being that you're pretty far from everything. Hopefully this won't be too big of an issue, but the truth is that the apartments are apparently nice enough that it balances out any potential issues. As for the internship... I'll check in on that later. Suffice it to say that there have been some issues out of my control, but as of today there have been some developments towards what could be a fantastic internship. I'd rather not go into it until everything is finalized, but hopefully I'll be able to go into more details soon.

So that's where I'm at now. I'll do my best to keep posting during break, as I should have internet during most of it. I'm intending to keep posting more installments in the "Middle (East) Ground" series, but they'll be a little more sporadic than last week. Being the Twitter-addict that I am, you can always follow along with me there. (Sidebar: Just one follower away from 100! Woohoo!) In the meantime, Pesach sameach to you all!

One last note: If you didn't see this article in the New York Times about the new Passover tradition at the White House, check this out.

Searching for Middle (East) Ground: Part III

Disclaimer: This is the third in a series of posts dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Obviously, this is an extremely sensitive issue for many people back home as well as every single person living in this part of the world. It is also an incredibly complex and important issue, and needs to be given the time and full discussion that it deserves. I am hoping that this will present the conflict in terms that are easy to understand, and I fully intend to approach this from an impartial and fair point of view.

Part III - Real World: West Bank

At this point, our weekend shifted gears for Shabbat. But we wouldn’t be spending Shabbat together – that would be too easy! No, for this Shabbat we would be headed to the settlements of Tekoa and Nokdim. Along with Joseph, another OTZMAnikim, I was sent to Nokdim to stay with the Mescheloff family. Here’s a picture of me and the family:

(Truly, the faces of evil.)

In total, about 12 of us were in Nokdim with various families. After being dropped off, we were told to follow two of the Mescheloff kids to their house, where we met their (English-speaking!) parents. As you can see, they had 5 kids (all boys!) from the oldest in high school all the way down to a baby of a couple of months. While only the oldest spoke a little English, the parents were both American-born, so they spoke fluently. Just like the rest of the settlement, the family was religious, which meant they kept Shomer Shabbat. For the non-Jews out there, this means that they do absolutely no work of any kind from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, and that includes driving a car, using any sort of electricity, cooking, whatever. Most Shomer families today use timers on the lights in their homes, cook dinner and lunch before Shabbat begins, and choose to walk to wherever they need to go. It might sound odd, but it can actually be quite peaceful and a nice change of pace.

Now, when most people think of settlements in the West Bank, they think of caravans, or what basically amounts to trailer homes that can move immediately if needed. When it came to the Mescheloff family, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, it was probably the biggest and nicest home I’ve stayed in all year! Not only did every child have their own room, but Joseph and I had our own rooms also, which is practically unheard of in most Israeli homes. Truthfully, if I had shown you pictures of Nokdim without telling you where it was, you would never have guessed that it was a settlement. Now, this isn’t to say that those caravans don’t exist – Allie actually stayed in one in Tekoa! It was quite an experience for her, but we’ve got enough going on here without me telling other people’s stories too. More pertinent to me, there was a group of caravans clustered in one part of Nokdim. We were told that most of Nokdim’s residents actually want them to get out of their town – simply put, that isn’t the image they want associated with their community. In talking to the various people I met in Nokdim, I found that none of them moved there out of some sort of political statement. Instead, most of them were new families that wanted a small community close to Jerusalem (just a 20 minute drive).

It turned out that a number of families wanted to host OTZMAnikim, so Joseph and I went to a different family for lunch the next day. It was a very different experience, as the family was our age and had a 10-month old baby. We were also joined by some of their friends who were visiting from Jerusalem. Really, I can’t stress enough the normalcy of this family. When you hear about Israeli settlements, you don’t hear about this. It really is hard to say that these families, who have done nothing but start a life in a quiet home, should be evicted from their homes so that there might be peace. It goes back to that idea that the Palestinian side of the story is easier to report due to the sensationalist side to it, but there is a human face to the Israeli side, and this was it.

After lunch with family number two, we headed back to our original family for a nice, relaxing, and above all normal Shabbat afternoon. Because it was Tu B’Shavat (the Jewish festival celebrating nature), we met up with the other OTZMAnikim for a small seder (ceremonial/religious meal) with the entire community. Unfortunately, neither one of our two families decided to attend, but we were still able to see what a strong and tight-knit community Nokdim was. It’s clear that this was a town where everyone knew each other and truly considered one another to be family.

Look, I’m honestly not trying to sway opinion one way or another with this blog series. In truth, I’m trying to do the opposite – present the facts, tell what I saw, and let you make your own decisions. Honestly, this entire conflict is far too complicated and has far too many sides to do anything else, and anyone who tells you differently is selling something. But I will say this – no matter what your feelings, no matter if you call this the West Bank, the Occupied Territories, Judea-Sameria, or whatever else, don’t blame these people. The majority of settlers are just families looking for a quiet community to call home, no different then the Americans who moved out west back in the 1800s. Why are these people in Nokdim? Because it’s a 20 minute drive from their jobs in Jerusalem. Not one of them said they are there because of any sort of political or even religious reason. Just a place to raise their children. So again, think what you want. Draw your own conclusions. You can even scream to the heavens about injustice if you want.

But don’t blame the Mescheloff family.

Coming up in Part IV... The left-wing has their day in court, but we learn first-hand the importance of how you deliver your message as tempers start to flair. Also, the next post will be up in a few days, likely sometime on Saturday.

Searching for Middle (East) Ground: Part II

Disclaimer: This is the second in a series of posts dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Obviously, this is an extremely sensitive issue for many people back home as well as every single person living in this part of the world. It is also an incredibly complex and important issue, and needs to be given the time and full discussion that it deserves. I am hoping that this will present the conflict in terms that are easy to understand, and I fully intend to approach this from an impartial and fair point of view.

Part II - Straddling the Green Line

Moving on, we headed to a town called Tzur Hadassah – a town that residents such as Neil Lazarus and Dganit (director of OTZMA) are quick to remind us is NOT in the West Bank! Tzur Hadassah is actually right on the border of the 1967 green line, which explains why those that live there are so quick to defend its geographic location.

Our first speaker there was a foreign reporter named Gwen Ackerman, who currently works for Bloomberg News. She approached the issues discussed from a purely journalistic standpoint – no opinions of her own, just explaining how she approached the Palestinian conflict. She felt strongly that there was a disproportionate amount of attention worldwide paid to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and that, as many in the media feel, the Palestinian side provides a much more sensational story – and as we all know, misery sells papers.

One of the interesting points she made was in regards to bias in the press – some of you back home might be surprised to find that the American media really isn’t all that bad. Truth be told, they would probably report both sides if they had more access to the Israeli stories. However, it is in Europe and particularly Britain that there is a big issue with editors dictating to their reporters which way to tell a story. As Ackerman told us, American reporters and news outlets are much more likely to stick to journalistic ethos than their British counterparts. She also had an interesting take on PM Benyamin “Bibi” Netinyahu, stating that he was much more statesmanlike than his last stint as PM, he seems much more calculated in everything he says, and that he was one of the best Israeli leaders at using worldwide PR – a skill much needed by his country.

Following Ackerman, we were introduced to one of my favorite speakers of the seminar – David Segal, Chief Policy Advisor (basically Chief of Staff) to Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. For those of you who don’t know who Ayalon is, he was the one who orchestrated the meeting with the Ambassador from Turkey that led to a massive (and really dumb) diplomatic spat between the two countries. In a nutshell, Turkey was airing really anti-Semitic TV programs, so the ambassador was summoned for a meeting. At that meeting, the ambassador was seated in a much lower chair, there was only an Israeli flag present, and the two men did not shake hands. In case there was some confusion about what was going on, Ayalon pointed out to a reporter the whole thing. Got it? Good. Needless to say, I was quite eager to ask Segal about this, as it had happened about a month earlier. But we’ll get to that…

For a political junkie like me, Segal was a great speaker. He spoke quite candidly about many issues, some of which was off-the-record (Sidebar: In fact, he pointedly asked us NOT to write about some issues on our blogs. Trust me, it was nothing earth-shattering. Except for the part where he told us about [CENSORED BY THE ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES. NOTHING TO SEE HERE.] Cool, huh?). Segal started off by pointing out that while Israel has a serious PR problem in Europe to the point where government leaders run the risk of arrest there, there has been no change in public opinion in the U.S. on Israel in 60 years, and there is huge receptivity to the country in Africa and Latin America. So there’s that. Mainly, Segal discussed the highly controversial Goldstone Report. Now, if you don’t know about this, pay attention, because Goldstone will be mentioned quite a few more times in this series.

The Goldstone Report was commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, which seems like it would be a good organization until you realize that they have spent virtually all of their time focusing on one country: Israel. Yep, not Iran, not Sudan, not any of the countries across the world suffering under brutal dictatorships. Israel. Specifically, Goldstone’s mandate was to investigate if there were human rights violations during the Operation Cast Lead, the 2008 military action by Israel that took place in Gaza following months of relentless bombing of towns like Sderot by Hamas, which originated in the region. Many felt that the report was inherently biased against Israel, leading the Israeli government to refuse to cooperate with Goldstone’s commission. More on that later, but the predictable result was a scathing attack on Israel’s alleged behavior during the conflict. I don’t care to go into details here (let’s be honest, this is long enough already and there’s a ton more to go), but feel free to peruse the report yourself. I’ll just let some internationally renowned newspapers make the case (the following is all from Wikipedia):

The Economist (UK) denounced the report as "deeply flawed" and detrimental to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, arguing that it was tainted by anti-Israel prejudice in the UNHRC. In particular, The Economist, while maintaining that allegations of Israelis committing war crimes were credible, chastised the mission's fact-finders for detecting little or no evidence in favor of the charge that Hamas endangered civilians by basing themselves around schools, mosques and hospitals, stating that the charge is supported by many reports in the public domain.

The Times (UK) criticized the report as "provocative bias" and described as dangerous and unreasonable the moral equivalence drawn in the report between Israel and Hamas. The Times praised Israel for quietly continuing to conduct its own investigation into the conflict despite the report, and concluded that Israel "is an accountable, democratic, transparent nation, and fighting to remain one amid challenges that few other nations ever have to face".

The Washington Post (US) wrote that "...the Goldstone commission proceeded to make a mockery of impartiality with its judgment of facts. It concluded, on scant evidence, that "disproportionate destruction and violence against civilians were part of a deliberate policy" by Israel. At the same time it pronounced itself unable to confirm that Hamas hid its fighters among civilians, used human shields, fired mortars and rockets from outside schools, stored weapons in mosques, and used a hospital for its headquarters, despite abundant available evidence”.

The Wall Street Journal (US) harshly criticized the report, calling it a "new low" in United Nations bias on Israel-related matters. WSJ wrote that the commission's members "were forced to make some astonishing claims of fact" in order to reach some of their conclusions. In particular, WSJ criticized the report's claim that the Gaza police force was a "civilian" agency and its inability to establish Palestinian use of mosques for military purposes despite evidence to the contrary.

So… yeah. Back to our story…

Needless to say, Goldstone has become quite the hot topic here, and tearing into him is an easy way to score points with the Israeli public. That being said, Segal took a little bit of mercy on him. He commented that really, nobody wanted the job, Goldstone forced the committee to change the mandate before he accepted it, and in truth, he probably didn’t even write the report himself. He also admitted what most sane people know – it was a big mistake for Israel to refuse to speak to the commission. To simplify the situation, a huge reason that the Goldstone Report was even possible was that no one really knew what was going on during the conflict. Israel decided to bar reporters from going inside of Gaza during Cast Lead, meaning that the only reports coming out were pretty much what Hamas wanted them to be. So how do you compete when you dig that big of a hole for yourself?

Regarding the incident with Turkey, the question was unfortunately pushed towards the end of our session and was only given a cursory and predictably empty answer. However, I was able to speak to Segal afterwards and ask him about it again, and I received a much more favorable answer. Segal told me that as Ayalon’s chief advisor, he helped him set up the meeting and was in the room for it, but it was never supposed to blow up into what it was. He asserted that a message needed to be sent to Turkey, as they had been poking Israel with a proverbial stick for some time. However, Ayalon was certainly not supposed to point this out to a reporter. According to Segal, Ayalon was talking to a reporter and forgot that, well, it was a reporter, and said a little too much. It sounded sort of like one of those situations where you see something happening across the room, you know how bad it is, but there’s no way you can get there in time to prevent it. Also, chances are Segal knows how badly this may have damaged Ayalon’s political future – unnecessary diplomatic spats are generally frowned upon when you’re the number two man in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Coming up in Part III... We head into the West Bank for Shabbat in a small Jewish community, as I attempt to put a human face on the conflict.

Searching for Middle (East) Ground: Part I

Disclaimer: This is the first in a series of posts dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Obviously, this is an extremely sensitive issue for many people back home as well as every single person living in this part of the world. It is also an incredibly complex and important issue, and needs to be given the time and full discussion that it deserves. I am hoping that this will present the conflict in terms that are easy to understand, and I fully intend to approach this from an impartial and fair point of view.

Part I – “Tough Questions for Tough People”

A little while ago, OTZMA participated in the “Conflict and Hope” seminar, dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One Israeli’s response when I told him that we’d be covering the whole thing during this time: “All right, make sure you guys have a solution by the end of it!” Well, as I learned the first day, you can only start to understand the conflict when you realize that you will never understand any of it. It’s frustrating, backwards, complicated, and filled with so many twists and turns it’ll make your head spin. So if you get confused reading this series of posts… just think about how I felt during those five days.

Now, one of the best things about OTZMA is that they really strive to show you all sides of Israel, for better or for worse. Most programs would put you in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv for the whole time, and you’d never see small communities like Ofakim, Netivot, or even Yokne’am. Same goes for the educational programs. There really was no agenda here: We heard the right’s point of view, we heard the left’s case, and we were even able to speak to some Palestinians and hear what they had to say. Some people were riled up by some of the speakers, but you can’t deny that we were given a very balanced seminar by OTZMA. I’ll do my best to provide the same for you, and I suppose the best way to do that is to focus on recapping the week with my own commentary here and there.

So, let’s start at the beginning. Thursday was dedicated to giving us a solid background in the conflict. After arriving in Jerusalem, we began the seminar with a presentation by Neil Lazarus, who goes around the country and occasionally internationally to speak on the Israeli political scene. Neil had spoken to us back in September (and I also saw him on my Birthright trip back in 2006, two days after Ariel Sharon’s stroke), and just about anyone on the trip will tell you he is one of if not the best speakers we’ve had all year. He set us up pretty well, encouraging us to ask the tough questions and do our best to find the truth in what we are being told – as he put it, ask “tough questions for tough people”. He also did a fine job reminding us of one of the most crucial facts in the entire conflict – no one is innocent. There are good and bad Israeli settlers, just as there are good and bad Palestinians. You simply can’t make this a black and white issue (which, admittedly, is exactly what some of our speakers tried to do).

We then were given a history lesson by a man named Steve Israel, a Jewish historian who made aliyah almost 35 years ago. Not the most exciting part of our week, but necessary to continue. Following this, we were treated to our first up close and personal taste of the conflict, with a trip into East Jerusalem. This part of the trip was led by a man named Jared Goldfarb, who led our seminar on Israeli politics back in November. Unfortunately, we had trouble getting permits to really walk around, so we had to settle for looking out the window of our bus. We really were able to see quite a bit. The houses are more cramped, the roads aren’t big enough for multiple cars to get through (let alone a bus), and it looks like just a completely different city than West Jerusalem. Now, even though the city is in much worse shape than the western half and there are obvious deficiencies (roads, garbage collection, public transportation, etc.), it’s interesting to note that many residents are in fact proud of the way they live, feeling that they are being true to their history, and would not want to change many aspects of their lives. Now, by this time it had been a long day, and we were all ready for bed – the real fireworks would start the next day.

Due to the fact that it was Friday and we had to deal with the upcoming Shabbat, the second day of the seminar was a bit short, but it ended up being (for me at least) the most interesting day of the entire weekend. Our day started by straight away heading into the West Bank, also known as the occupied territories, also known as Judea and Samaria. A lot goes into the name of something, nowhere more than on this little piece of land. We first headed to a town called Efrat, which turned out to be a very nice and prosperous town. Following a quick drive around the settlement, we headed in to meet with a woman named Eve Harrow, an American immigrant living in Efrat whose views were, shall we say… a bit right-wing. One of the things Neil pointed out to us is that it’s important to see what map our speakers had in their heads – well, one of the first things Eve did was to pull out a map of the Kingdom of David from thousands of years ago. That give you an idea of her viewpoint? During our hour with her, Eve made some interesting points. For example, does the constant criticism of Israel simply boil down to politically correct anti-Semitism? When the left talks about their vision for peace, are they ignoring basic human behavior? Are they, as Eve described them, “messianic”? But if you want a quote that sums up Eve’s feelings towards the situation as well as many others, here’s what she said in regards to the Palestinians (and in fact the entire Arab world):

“We are dealing with people who are perfectly happy to die as long as we die too.”

Wow. Read that again. That’s a sobering thought. Now, to describe the entire Arab world like that is absolutely absurd and ridiculous. In fact, I spent most of the question-and-answer portion of her session trying to ask if she saw a difference between Islam and radical Islam, which I don’t believe she does. However, for those who would blindly accept points of view such as the highly controversial Goldstone Report and claim that Israel does not have the right to fight back against groups such as Hamas… well, look at it from her point of view, where she can tick off the many friends she has who have lost sons and daughters to terrorists. Now, while Eve did know how to present her side, she did have a tendency to try and overstate her case by bringing in examples using the United States and Europe, and she also made a bizarre misstep when she randomly claimed that Christopher Columbus was a Jew who was really trying to find a Jewish homeland. This really didn’t do her much good, as a lot of people (admittedly including me) latched onto this statement afterwards and used it as a bit of a punchline. However, there is no doubt that this was a remarkably intelligent woman who presented her case very well.

Coming up in Part II... We head to a town right on the green line to hear from a Middle East reporter as well as a top Israeli political advisor, as well as a brief discussion of the infamous Goldstone Report. If you didn't like what you read today, please hang in there... there's a long way to go!

So Much To Say

Over the last few days, I helped to build a wall, used a pickaxe (I have pictures to prove it), spent Shabbat in the ancient city of Tzfat, went to the mosh-pit version of services, slept in a cave (albeit furnished), sang hippie Jew Shabbat songs, went to a refurnished Byzantine-era motel, heard from a Palestinian and went to his village, went on a 3 hour hike between Arab villages, saw a British film being filmed in a Druze village, went to a Druze restaurant, almost made my director’s 9 year old son throw up (AWKWARD), met the maker of the most expensive soap in the world (and bought some for cheap!), walked through the Baha’i Gardens in Akko, visited the holiest site in the Baha’i religion (and pissed off some Baha’i making pilgrimage in the process…), took a tour through the ancient city of Akko, and met with one of the most famous sportscasters in Israel. This was over a period of four days. Out of curiosity, what did you do during that time? Watch some college basketball? (Sidebar: I LOVE NORTHERN IOWA. And I hate Bob Huggins’s jumpsuit. Put on a suit next time.) Cheer (or mourn) the passing of health care reform? How do I explain everything that happened over what seems like such a short time?

Welcome to my biggest issue this year.

For the record, I in no way mean to criticize or call you, my loyal reader(s), lazy. I’m simply pointing out how ridiculous some of our days can be and how hard it is to communicate that to everyone back home. We all talk about how easy it is to keep in touch with everyone back home, and it’s true. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, all of it make it easier than ever before and make the world smaller than it ever has been. But really, is it all that easy?

The other day I was talking to one of my good friends on Facebook. I asked him about our fraternity’s recent formal in kansas City, and he asked my about my upcoming vacation in Croatia. Then he had to go to class, I had to go to volunteering, and that was it. As we say here in Israel, zey oh. How can I possibly tell him everything that’s been happening here in such a short time? And that’s just one friend – there are countless others that I’ve barely been able to talk to over the past year, and many more that I haven’t spoken to at all. Are they bad friends? Of course not. Am I a bad friend? I hope not.

The truth is, it’s hard. I generalized before about what you did over the past four days, but I bet that there was a lot more than that. I really wish that I could tell you all everything that’s happened over the past days, weeks, months, and year, but it’s just not possible. But, I try my best. I’m honestly not criticizing anyone for not keeping in touch – truth be told, your lives are much busier than mine on a day-to-day basis. If anything, I’m the one that needs to be doing a better job at keeping up this blog and tweeting more about what’s going on in Israel as opposed to random things that cross my mind.

In any case, I’ve got a little over three months until I’m back in the good ole’ US of A. Chances are, many of you will never hear all of the stories I’ve accumulated this year – there are just too many of them. But I’ll do my best. In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment, send me an email, leave me a message on Facebook or Twitter, or even spend a couple cents and give me a call (through Skype if you want). But until that time, keep reading this space and we’ll be in touch!

(Sidebar: On that note, really do keep watching this space – long series of blogs covering my February weekend with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict starts tomorrow!)