Eliat :: Israel
Drinking, floating, crap places, new religions & lots of funny hats.
Places: Tel Aviv, Nazareth, Haifa & En Gedi.
Coolest thing I did: Floated in the Dead Sea. What a tourist.
Coolest thing I didn´t know: Ultra Orthadox Jews (the ones with strange hats and ZZ top beards) don't have to serve in the army, despite the fact they are the key party pushing for forced military service. Hmmmm...
Tel Aviv was a breath of fresh, secular air after Jerusalem. Not only did I manage to get drunk, but I got on a surburban bus and no one blew it up. Hooray! There is a serious side to this. I just got back from a backpacker drinking joint called Mike's Place and was talking to receptionist at the hostel. She joked that the owner gave discounts to Hizbolah, and the reason for this was two blokes who walked into Mike's Place and blew themselves up stayed in that very hostel. That's a bit close to reality for me. The fact people were so blaise about the whole thing made me realise the violence has dulled people's reactions to things like death. There is also the story of a bloke who stayed in the hostel for 3 years, woke up one day with a headache, went to hospital and wound up dead. They refered to that as him checking into the big hostel in the sky. I also noticed that once people get out of the army in Tel Aviv they all become left wing pacifists and very non religious. It's all the return disporates that walk around with yamakes and learn Hebrew. The Israelis born here seem to just want a normal life.
So, I went to see the home place of Big JC, Nazareth. I don't recommend it. Not only is it a complete pain in the arse to get into and out of, but there is nothing there of any religious significance. The church of the Assumption (where Mary supposedly got the word she was up the duff with our saviour) was only rebuilt in 1970, so there's older churches in Sydney. A complete waste of time.
Haifa was something a bit different. There are Jewish, Arab and Christian communities living shoulder to shoulder without too many issues (only one bombing in the current uprising). There is also the Shrine of Bab. I had no idea who Bab was, so I asked. Bab was a Baha'i. I had no idea who the Baha'is were, so I asked. Baha was a bloke who was supposed to be the messiah who showed up in Persian (modern Iran) in the 1800s. He was the last prophet, and they recognise Mohammed and JC as prophets too. This didn't go over well with the Persian authorities and Baha got martyred. Bab was a later disciple who also got martyred. They moved his remains to Haifa and built a big shrine and some nice gardens. Besides this, Elijah's cave is the other big attraction. It's a nice idea, but it probably wasn't the cave Elijah hid in and today it kind of smells of urine. Still, one more holy thing to tick off.
I was quite pleased with meeting some liberal thinking young Israelis on Tel Aviv. I was starting to wonder if everyone my age in this country wanted to knock down the Dome of the Rock and build a Third Hebrew Temple in it's place. Yeah, that'd bring peace to the Middle East. Seriously though, there are enough people who are sick of bombings, compulsory military service and are not so one sided that they can't see that maybe the root of the Palesitinans complaints are not so unfounded. I learned alot about what people learn in school (that God gave them the promised land and it's ok for that reason to kick the Arabs out) and who says what in the whole thing. I was amazed to learn that the kids of the hard line, ultra orthadox jews don't have to do military service. So people who don't belive this is the right way to solve things fight for people who do that don't have to send their kids to fight. That really annoyed me. I also found out most Israelis have no idea why the hell anyone would want to come to Israel as a tourist. That explains why everyone in Jerusalem looked at me like I had 2 heads when I told them I didn't have Jewish roots, I was just looking around.
The whole kibbutz thing amazes me. There are no end of young Westerners willing to work for nothing but food and board in these communes. You hear about settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, well these were the forerunners. When the government was encouraging the European Jews to come into the country after the holocaust, they settled them on Arab villages abandoned during the war of 1948. They were set up to be self sufficient, though that's changed alot since, now quite a few of them engage in commercial farming and high tech manufacturing. A generation of Westerners have volunteered to work for nothing on these things, and I can't figure out why. I guess it's like summer camp for 20 somethings except you have to do arts and crafts for 8 hours instead of 2. Add to that the political wrongness of the whole thing and I don't think I'll be doing my part for kibbutzhood anytime soon. I do, however, seem to be the only one.
I've had a good time here, but I think I'll feel a whole lot more comfortable once I'm over that border into Egypt tomorrow. This place still has far too many problems to make you feel relaxed here. I'm getting sick of having my stuff searched everytime I enter a bus station, supermarket, shopping mall or falafel stand. I'm currently sitting 2km from Aqaba in Jordan and 3km from the Egyptian border. After my last effort crossing a land border I've decided to give myself a whole day to do it. Here's hoping that's enough.