I used my ipod touch to take notes on tiyul as I didn't have access to a computer. This has resulted in a slightly different format for the blog of this particular week.
Sunday 27th March
Music blasting and 17 year old boys running round yelling at the top of their voices. Not a pretty sight? Indeed not. To my utter dismay this was in fact the scene in the machon dormitorys at six o'clock on Sunday morning. We stumbled onto buses with bags packed for the week and fell asleep almost immediately only to be awoken two hours later for breakfast in a field somewhere. After breakfast we were given a brief explanation of the disengagement to prepare us for later in the day. After that we headed to Nitzan which is a temporary town for the settlers who were expelled from גוש כתיף. Five years later these people are still in temporary housing without proper bomb shelters and having had to completely rebuild their lives. It seems so bizarre that all this was given up without the compromise that went with the Sinai land agreements and the peace that was (albeit temporarily) constructed with Egypt. Unsurprisingly many of the teenagers who were due to enter the army at the time of the disengagement from these settlements refused to.
Many of the settlers wanted their homes to be left in tact, largely due to their dream of one day returning to their homes however almost everything was distorted by either the government or the Palestinians. The government argued that if no agreement was to be formed including a purchasing of the previously developed buildings, there was a limit on the amount they were willing to give up for free so they demolished all the houses, only leaving the synagogues (as it's against halachah to destroy them), they even moved the cemeteries and reburied people so families had to sit shiva for a previously unheard of second time.
What does Palestine actually mean. Many Israelis today will happily say that they lived in Palestine when it was part of the british mandate. So what it means today is something completely different. But does that even matter? Surely it's what a word stands for today that's important, rendering what it meant previously irrelevant.
כפר דרום settlement in gush katif
Gush katif was previously only sand dunes which the settlers cultivated and built on. They developed land people previously thought it would be impossible to do.
After being spoken to by one of the displaced settlers we went on a tour around the 'temporary' village. We were then taken into a room to be shown three rather propaganda esque movies about the settlement and how wonderful It had been, about the whole process through the eyes of one of the youth and about the way the settlement looked after the disengagement. The first two were fairly interesting and full of information I didn't know but at the same time I was constantly aware of the context and purpose behind us and other people watching them. They were clearly very one sided. From all the different people we are taken to speak to, it seems as if they've all been screwed over, most oftenly by the israeli government but then I find myself thinking about the necessity of certain actions and the convoluted decision making process behind everything that happens. It is just yet another dimension of the confusion in my mind surrounding many issues linked to Israel, Judaism and zionism.
I feel like in Israel there is a constant conflict between the people and the future, as there has indeed also been in other countries throughout history. For whatever reason it is just more present and aggressive when demonstrated by Israel.
We then (somewhat controversially in many of our opinions) moved on to Sderot. We were met by a guy called אלירן. He began his talk with of course a safety warning and telling us what to do in the event of a red siren. Interestingly he decided to tell us that there weren't at the moment actually rockets being fired into Sderot, only the surrounding area. Having said that he then told us that more than 12 000 rockets have hit Sderot and surrounding areas, sometimes more than 50 in one day. Every single bus stop is a bomb shelter, every house including every single individual apartment has it's own bomb shelter. People in Sderot have as little as 15 seconds of warning when a rocket is heading their way. We saw only a small percentage of the exploded rocket shells gathered outside the police station and one of the leaders explained about how most of the damage was actually done by the shrapnel that dispersed when the rocket exploded. We were taken to see a playground with a caterpillar style bomb shelter and also a fully protected and armoured school. Then we were taken to a viewpoint that allowed you to see Sderot on one side and the ghaza strip on the other.
I guess the thing people found most difficult about today was the stark contrast with the challenging and mind boggling events of last week. The combination of first the close proximity of the bomb and then the discussions with the Arab Israelis left a lot of people questioning things they'd previously been so sure of and taken for granted. Many people struggled with what they believed to be the treatment of the Arabs in Israel. In feedback in chavurot at the end of Thursday I tried to explain how important I thought it was to definitely question what you have been taught and believe in whilst at the same time remembering we see a very specific group of people on the program and it's very easy to arrive here from whatever country you come from having been fed 'Zionist drivel' all your life and so immediately deciding to jump ship and defend what you suddenly feel morally obligated to. I think the way I responded to the discussion with the Arab Israelis was vastly different to how it would have been six months ago. I feel like now i am much more able to sit back and absorb the information presented to me, in however a controversial style, and retain it to later compare and contrast with other narratives and make an informed decision based on my understanding as opposed to being always ruled by how I emotionally feel in a situation.
After an interesting but tiring day (six o'clock wake up remember!) we heading to Dimona to dump our stuff, eat some munch and shluf for a bit before the evening kef peula at eight thirty. The peula which in fact turned out to be a colour war themed around working together as a community on tiyul.
Monday 28th March
Monday morning began, once again with people who definitely shouldn't have been in my room, blasting music at seven in the morning. We packed up all our stuff, headed to breakfast and climbed on the buses, one headed to Masada and one to נכל פרז. I was on the masada bus and on the way they explained to us a slightly convoluted version of mafia called southern tribes. As per usual I am a standard nomad which is one of the people who basically just sits by and gets to do nothing. I always get the crappy part!
When we arrived at masada and got the cable car to the top, I couldn't help but wonder what exactly we would be doing up there. Little did I know that despite having previously climbed Masada I clearly was so unaware and payed so little attention that I totally missed the whole really interesting Storting the history that took place there. We were explained King Herod's purpose and destruction of the initial palace there. We also had described to us the story of the sagicees and their final revolt. The educator Jamie (a Zionism teacher from machon) told the story from the perspective of one of the leaders and the different decisions that were made. At the end we discussed the legitimacy of what was effectively mass suicide to prove a point and weather or not this is what we thought they should have done. We also discussed that although there is some archeological evidence of what happened and the story basically fits this evidence, we are not one hundred percent sure what happened. most people in our group agreed that it would have been more noble if they had died fighting rather than giving up to prove a point. We also talked about the Judaism implication of suicide and what was technically murder. Jamie then brought up the point that what we know and believe about suicide was from the Babylonian Talmud which was written only later as part of the creation of the diaspora. it really was fascinating for me but also exceedingly frustrating seeing as I'd clearly been taught all about it before but simply hadn't absorbed or really been interested in any if it.
After Masada we once again returned to the buses and were driven onwards and, well in this case, downwards, to the lowest point on the earth, Ein Bokek and the dead sea. After my tour experience, something I had little desire to repeat, I spent that hour munching lunch and sunbathing.
After a few hours shluffing on the bus we arrived at the very same Bedouin tent we stayed at on the Carmiel Chanukah tiyul. We then went for a casual camel ride followed by the 'Bedouin experience' all inclusive stories and dinner. For our evening activity we went to a slightly bizarre interpretive dance workshop followed by a performance and jam. During the workshop I had the pleasant experience of not being caught during the trust game and falling flat on the ground. Fun times. That evening was yet another fantastic nights sleep of sharing a tent with 50 other people.
Tuesday 29th March
Not only did I freeze practically all of the previous night, I also woke up mid way through, desperate to go to the loo but there was noway I was getting out of my warm sleeping bag and going all the way to the toilets all by myself in the middle of he night. We had a pretty good breakfast at seven fifteen in the morning (the same place we looked at in awe last time we were here and had to cook our own breakfast) before once again loading all of our stuff onto the bus and heading someplace new.
This someplace new was unfortunately not so new and turned out to be Sde Boker and Ben Gurions tomb once again.
After Ben Gurion's tomb was a small hike, lunch and then a bike ride through the desert mountains. The ride was difficult at points but beautiful scenery and great fun, I really enjoyed it. Afterwards we all headed to the campsite for epic soup followed by dinner, a really cute peula and a bonfire. part of the peula was sitting in a circle in our chavura groups with our eyes closed and different statements read out. Every few statements there were twompeople with their eyes open, taping the people they thought they most applied to. For the 'most likely to succeed in the movement' I got tapped twice in a row which was funny and quite sweet. We then got a semi early night in our oh so luxurious tents... The door of ours didn't close so we had the pleasure of waking up to a gale in our tent in the middle of the night.
Wednesday 30th March
On wednesday we woke at six. For those of us who didn't hike we sunbathed in the desert till about lunchtime at which point we met up with those on the short hike and headed to Eilat and the underwater sea oberbatory. Surprisingly I had a fantastic time and it made me desperate to dive again.
At about four o'clock we headed back to central Eilat and checked into our genuinely luxurious hotel to shower and shluf before dinner and a boat ride of terrible music and some even more terrible dancing on our part.
Thursday 31st March
On Thursday we had a much needed lie in till about 9 before heading down for a luxuriously relaxed breakfast of lots of yummy things. We went straight to the beach for watersports (repeated goes on the banana boat and pedalo on my part) and then pizzur and chill time in Eilat before waving goodbye to southern tiyul and embarking on the five hour coach return journey.
My return home was short lived as I quickly unpacked and repacked for my weekend with mamma and pops
