Days 2 & 3: Hats, Crafts, and Tanks

Where to start writing about the past couple of days? The tour has been intense so far.

Our guide, Doron, is a highly-educated man who has been doing this work for around 15 years, the last ten of them while working on a PhD in biblical history or something like that. (He and my Aunt Ellen go way back, since he happens to be the same guide who was leading the same tour when she took it 10 years ago!) In addition to pointing out key locations and their associations to recent historical events, he talks about scholarly debates about which parts of the bible can be taken as historical facts, and which interpretations of archaeological findings are used to support those arguments, as well as how such arguments are used to support or reject the legitimacy of the State of Israel.

Atop the ruins of Caesarea yesterday afternoon, he asked for a “brave volunteer,” and I thought that sounded like me, so I raised my hand. He had encouraged us to all wear our hats, and proceeded to tell an illustrated history of the site we were standing on, with each civilization being represented by an additional hat on my head.

Yesterday morning began with a tour and presentation of “Independence Hall,” the site where Israel’s statehood was declared in 1948. It was a fascinating and moving presentation, and at some point I will probably try to write about the emotions…. afterwards Doron pointed out at least one way it was skewed towards the Jewish perspective (that the partition deal proposed at one point was seen as giving the Jews a disadvantage because a lot of the land allotted to them was desert, whereas in reality most people thought there was a good chance of finding oil in said desert) – he tries to represent the various perspectives on history in a balanced way, while acknowledging that he himself grew up in and is part of the “Zionist narrative.”

In between those two events, Doron offered us commentary on the architectural variety of Rothschild Blvd., advice about where to find gluten-free falafel and pita, and encouragement to explore the open-air market where manufactured goods, vegetables, spices, pastries, and arts and crafts were sold. Doron is also well-steeped enough in Americana to be able to make culturally relevant jokes; for example, as we all nearly missed noticing our quick passage over the River Jordan because he’d been talking about something else, he commented, “sorry, it’s not really ‘deep and wide.’”

Today, after a fairly restful night at a hotel at Kibbutz K’far Blum in the north, we visited two nature preserves, one at Tel Dan, the largest tributary of the Jordan, and one in the Hula Valley, where an estimated 500 million migratory birds pass every year, and where we were entertained by a “4-D” movie – not only were we wearing 3D viewing glasses, but our seats moved and wind blew on us to simulate being a bird in flight, and water splashed on us at appropriate times… I actually screamed at one point early on when a large insect appeared to fly right into my face. We also drove through a Druze village, and visited an olive oil and olive-based cosmetics factory, a vineyard, and a bunker.

It’s the bunker I want to write about, though I’m not sure how to begin. We arrived at a second kibbutz, Kibbutz Merom Golan, and got out of our tour bus into two jeeps. Ours was driven by Ilan, who used crutches due to an old war injury that has been acting up. He seemed to enjoy giving us a scare as we traversed some extremely rocky and steep terrain (at one point my Uncle Irving, ever the joker but also curious to learn more about Ilan, asked him, “what do you do when you’re not terrifying tourists?”) He told us fascinating information about kibbutz life and how the economics of it have changed (we are to learn more about that later this evening).

Doron had gently warned us that Ilan’s perspective would be more right-wing than his, and that we would be going very close to the borders with Syria and Lebanon (although, as Ilan pointed out, it’s not really a “border” with Syria, because borders are agreed upon boundaries between countries who recognize one another’s’ existence and are generally accepted by international law, whereas the Golan Heights, though not currently actively disputed, is an Israeli “annexation” (occupation) of land that was formerly Syrian that has never been recognized by Syria or any other country. Although it is actively farmed (most of the vineyards are here) and there is an Israeli city in it, it was apparently frequently used as a possible bargaining chip in peace negotiations between Israel and Syria prior to the outbreak of civil war in Syria).

What I was unprepared for was the way the land itself has been, literally, war-torn. Some of the uneven terrain we traversed in the jeep was due to giant ditches dug to slow down the passage of tanks. Large areas were cordoned off with barbed wire and signs warning of minefields. Trenches, bunkers, bomb shelters, and artillery positions are all still evident, and some of them are still periodically in use, as well as abandoned British tanks left as decoys. In the midst of all of this, the kibbutzniks are growing apples, kiwis, and other organic fruits and vegetables. Despite the political and military uncertainties, they have recently planted a field of oak saplings and truffle spores, which will take many years to bear truffles if successful.

We walked through an actual bunker that is still in use at times by the Israeli military, though not this week. Coming out into the trench at the other side, we looked out over a valley at the villages across the border into Syria. Today, there was no shelling happening there, but, Ilan and Doron said, often these days there is. One of the tour participants had asked Ilan during the jeep ride how the strife in Syria affects Israelis. His basic answer seemed to be that, although it is destabilizing and makes negotiating a long-term peace agreement seem impossible because there is no-one to negotiate with, it’s also something of a relief to the Israelis living in the Golan Heights because the Syrians are too focused on the internal strife to be attacking Israel. I believe his actual words were something like, “If they’d rather kill each other, we wish them the best of luck.”

Now, this is probably partly the sort of grim humor Doron has also attempted to use several times on the bus with us to make light of the possibility of us being in danger. But it felt, not surprisingly, like real hatred. If my enemies are killing each other, so much the better for me. I still cannot really empathize with this degree of dehumanization, but I’m trying. I certainly felt how my whole body was tense while driving through this area, and tried to imagine living with the degree of vigilance Ilan was describing (he explained to us that the anti-tank fortifications were no longer that relevant because of the breakdown of the situation in Syria; instead of defending themselves against a large and organized invading army, they needed to be prepared for smaller incursions by one of the dozens of different militia groups. A sophisticated security fence that senses any breach has been installed, and they investigate many things, most of which turn out to be wild boar and the like).

I was too polite to ask the woman who gave us the tour of the winery what they would do if Israel someday gives the Golan Heights back to Syria, but I’m betting that they, too, are somewhat happy that such peace negotiations aren’t currently possible.

Okay, so I’m not going to take time to edit this – time for another conversation about kibbutz life, and then dinner in the sumptuous dining hall.