Just when I thought I escaped the cold bitter canadian winters....
Kinda like how L.A. is the place for "homeless" people to migrate to, Israel is the place for all the stray cats and dogs in the middle east. [ I don't really blame them for their choice either.. ]
My friends and I recently discovered one dog (out of the many) and have grown attached to him.. He found us one day while we were roaming the old city and he followed us around until we made it back to our apartments.
Since then, whenever we see him we give him a treat... He's a real special dog.... (but not to replace the one at home who's probably sleeping on the coach at this very moment..)
Oh yeah, we named him Benny...
My mind is in jumbles and its hard for me to come up with words to describe the impact that my stay in Chevron left on me.
One thought of mine is how different reality of the Jew's in Chevron is compared to America. In Amerca a person will turn on the 10 o' clock news, hear about wars in the middle east - think about how horrible it is - then go to sleep with an easy conscious. I cant blame them, I've done the same thing myself and when I go home I might even continue to do so.
In Chevron, Jews are living under the threat of the Palestinians every day. They walk down the street and are neighbors to people who hate the very essence of their being.
This sounds extreme, maybe I'm being extreme...But thats just what it is.
I saw things that I've always heard about, but never put together as a reality...
For instance I saw soldiers posted at every corner for our protection.
Palestinians stop what they are doing and stare at you, most of the time with hatred
Fences, Walls and Barbed wire to prevent chaos..
Bullet holes in household objects...
Children living their life as they would anywhere else without fear...
I saw one of the Holiest sites in the world for Jews, Christians and Moslem's... and when I peaked through bars to see the place where Abraham's tombstone is, on the other side I saw Moslims bowing down and praying, even some gazing though the window at us...What did I think of them and what did they think of me at that moment?
I saw a building stopped in the middle of production. 12 single rooms, open windows with a plastic covering, one bathroom, one washer and one drier... and I heard that 12 families live in one room each [one per family] and they share the one bathroom and one washer and drier...
I heard a story of a building that was once an Arab market, but after a shooting in 1994 they vacated the building. It was left empty for 6 years, then fixed by Jews who moved in and lived there for maybe 6. I heard that this past August they were expelled by the government for living there illegally. But it wasn't so easy to take out the people who so very much wanted to stay. The doors were fired down and blocked with settlers locked inside..
Three of them even locked themselves inside a concrete box, for standoff, that took the soldiers hours to open up.
And I saw a small city, that is unable to build up because it upsets the people who hate them.
I saw and heard all this and I now know it as a reality. In America we live a luxury life and so many people take that for granted.
I dont know where I'm going with this.. my mind is in jumbles...
View of Tsfat from the Citadel at the top of the hill
Outside the opera house in Budapest.
