Nate's blog

Today I went to school and saw people who I have not seen for 4 months. It was really nice to see how people have changed and grown. I also got my yearbook and noticed that the TIF page and the page about the 10th grade shabbaton had the same descriptions that last year’s did (For example the TIF page says that we left for Israel in 2007 and that there are 39 people on the program, they are only 36 and we left on Feb, 28, 2008). The mistakes are kind of funny, but I wonder if the yearbook editors had something against the tenth grade. hmm……(jk)

Yes, I am back home. But I can’t sleep so I have decided to write about what I did during my last few days in Israel.

Last week I heard from this person from an organization called the David project. He talked to us about how to defend Israel in public. He showed us examples of miss reporting in the media about Israel and he also showed us some Palestinian T.V. It was really scary to see children being educated to kill Jews. (If you want to see some hate T.V for yourself then go to http://pmw.org.il/)

We also went river rafting on one of the rivers that feeds into the Jordan and we went to an army border base and got to play on a real working armed personnel carrier. We also learned about the second Lebanon war.

On Sunday and Monday this week I was at school taking my core final. On Tuesday I went to the beach and packed, at night we had a final banquet where we said goodbye to our teachers and staff. On Wednesday we went to Mt. Herzl and saw the graves of the people that we had learned about, including Michael Levin, a student who had learned at Muss who went to the army and was killed in the second Lebanon war. After that we went to the Herzl museum, went to a goodbye dinner in Jerusalem and had a final class discussion where we wrote letters to ourselves that we are going to get around Rosh HaShana. Following that we went to the airport and got on the plane home. On the plane we saw our Gadna commander’s commander; she was embarrassed and ended up sitting next to some of us.

(On a side note: If you are looking for the final montage that was shown at the banquet it will be up in a day or two)

Last night I went to a play at the נא לגעת (English: Nalaga’at, Lit: Please Touch) center in Tel Aviv. The play was entitled “Not by Bread Alone”, it started out in a bakery and showed people baking bread, then they put the bread into the oven and while the bread is baking we see the dreams of each of the characters acted out in turn and at the end of the play the audience was invited to go on stage and eat the bread that was baking the whole play and to talk to the actors. It was a very moving play.

The thing that made it so moving was that most of the actors were blind and deaf (3 of them were only deaf). They acted out what it is like to be deaf and blind, there were many moving moments for me. One of them was during one of the character’s dreams. He dreamed about being out in the rain alone, and then the lights were turned off in the theater (it was pitch black), and there was a thunder sound effect, however this was a special effect, because it was playing at the same time as other noises, so instead of hearing the thunder through my ears, I felt the thunder through my senses. The other moving moment was when I was on stage after the play and I was talking to one of the blind deaf actors (she had an interpreter) and after I told her that I was from Los Angeles she taught me the sign for Los Angles.

It was very meaningful evening. Something that made it even more special for me was the fact that it took place in Israel and that Israel is the only place in the world with organizations like Nalaga’at.

(Side note: it was also Lag Ba’Omer night when we went to the play, so we were not able to make a bonfire. We did see some on the side of the road though.)

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 Yesterday was May 21. It was a Wednesday, and if I would have been on campus I would have been able to sleep in until 7:30. However we had a trip and as a result I was forced to wake up at 6:45(am). Yes, I had to wake up at 6:45(am) two days in a row. Needless to say I was tired the whole day, however after hearing some of the people who talked to us about Israel the way that they did I woke up a bit.
We started our day at this place called Givat Hiviva, it is named after a Jewish woman who was working for the British during WWII and was captured and killed by the Nazis. We had two people come to speak to us there. The first person who spoke to us was named Lidia, she was originally British however she moved to Israel 50 years ago because of anti-Semitism, she told us about how as a child she tried to get a job but could not because when employers found out that she was a Jew they would not talk to her any more, she also told us of how as a child she was once beat up at school because a child was trying to find the horns on her head. She said that it was not the children’s fault that they hurt her that they were just ignorant. I disagree, when someone breaks a law that they do not know about they are still responsible for their actions, same goes for anti-Semitism. If someone does something anti-Semitic then they are still responsible for their actions, after all if they were ignorant then shouldn’t they educate themselves before they go and beat up Jewish kids to find their horns?
Next we were talked at  yelled at  forced to hear got to listen to this Israeli Arab Palestinian with Israeli citizenship named Amir. Amir is a fairly well off person, he was able to go to law school in England and in New York and he was able to establish his own law firm. Yet he complained about talked to us about how he is “discriminated against” in Israel. He told us about how the houses that are built without permits in his town (this is a scam to avoid paying taxes) don’t have electricity or sewage and how this is Israel discriminating against him and his people (the Palestinians, it is funny that he identifies with them because when asked if he would like to live in the Palestinian state when it is created he said no and it appeared that he might even have been a little bit scared of the West Bank and Gaza natives). Before he stated talking he told us that he was only going to tell us his personal experience, that he was not going to talk politics to us. Yet almost every word out of his mouth was an insult to his country, the country that gives him all of the freedoms that every citizen of a democratic state is entitled to, the nation of Israel. He even went as far to say that the Prime Minister of Israel is not his leader, he/she is only a leader for the Jews. He also said things like, I am not happy that I can never be a general in the IDF, yet before he said that he said that he did not want to be in the IDF and could if he wanted too. Also when he talked he said things like, “They don’t build roads to illegally built houses, I don’t want to tell you what to think, but do you think that it is fair? Well, it is not”. Then someone asked him if he thought Hezbollah was a terrorist organization, his answer was “Did you know that Israel was occupying Lebanon, well Hezbollah was trying to get them out, so no I do not think that they are terrorists.” He also said, “I think that they commit acts of terror, but they do it just like Israel does in response, so I do not think that they are evil” This really upset me and I am sure that everyone else in the room was upset by this too. Hezbollah is recognized as a terrorist organization by most countries and it works to undermine the Lebanese government. They also target innocent people while Israel only targets militants. His response was also disgusting, because he is an Israeli citizen and saying something like that is not very supportive of his country.
Next we heard from an Israeli Jew named Reuven who lives on the hills surrounding an Arab town. He told us how the people in the town below really don’t have much to complain about. Their kids don’t have to go to the army and they don’t need to be scared of their neighbors like he does. He told us of how he has friends who are Arabs and how for 3 years they were able to sleep well at night while he had to be worried about whether or not his children were safe. He also told us of how there was once a bomb planted in his town by someone in the neighboring town and now his town has a electric fence with a border patrol car surrounding it. For the most part I agreed with Reuven and thought the he made a lot of sense.
After that we got in the bus and saw a few Arab towns. The person who showed them to us was named Yuvi. He is an Israli Arab and is the most rational person that I met the whole day. He explained to us that most Israeli Arabs are not like Amir. He also told us that a lot of the problems that Israeli Arabs have are not really caused by Israel.

Later we drove to a Druze city and went to a market there. At this market I was literally pulled into a store and when one of the people who worked there saw me looking at an IDF sweatshirt they confused me into buying it for 60 NIS (actually that is not such a bad price), however when I got back to the dorms later that night I noticed that it was discolored.
Next we went to eat dinner at a Druze house, the food was really good. There was also a Druze girl who talked to us about the Druze culture and we were able to find a bit about what they believe. Calling this girl good looking would be an understatement.
Over all I had a very interesting day and I learned a lot.

Yesterday I went to the Weitzman and the Israeli Maritime college. It was supposed be a day themed around Israeli science. However it really wasn’t, the stuff we did at the Weizmann we could have seen at any normal science museum. The stuff we saw at the Maritime college was really cool, but it was not specific to Israel. We learned about intertidal zones, what marine scientists do in the lab and we got to see the sea turtle rescue center there. It was cool and I learnt a lot about sea turtles and how humans are effecting them, but I did not learn anything about the many sciences that are specific to Israel.